White Fabergé Lilies
by LucyCrewe11
Summary: Historical(ish) AU: Dimitri the kitchen boy becomes a companion to Alexei and remains on with the doomed Romanov family through the Russian Revolution. Somewhere along the way, a romance silently blooms. Who will survive? Anastasia/Dimitri. Rated T for violence and thematic elements.
1. Prologue: Part One

**AN: This is a historical(ish) AU fanfic based on the Don Bluth children's movie, _Anastasia_, but this is not a children's story. This is rated T for violence, some gore, and thematic elements. **

**There will also be eventual character deaths.**

**I don't wish to ruin anyone's childhood with this story, so if you feel this fanfiction might offend you or taint a cherished movie memory, please click the back button now.**

**For those of you who stay, I hope you enjoy the story! **

White Fabergé Lilies

An _Anastasia _Fanfiction by LucyCrewe11

_Prologue_

The Romanovs were celebrating the 300th anniversary of their family's rule. A grand party was in full swing at the palace in Saint Petersburg. Women in glittering jewels giggled demurely as handsome gentlemen with flaxen mustaches and dark eyes handed them sparkling glasses of bubbling champagne. Officers and guards bowed deeply and made gracious chit-chat; great ladies danced as lustily as ballerinas, if a little more stiffly for all the emphasis put on good posture and ramrod-straight backs hammered into their psyches.

It was at this magical ball, straight out of a Russian Cinderella story, that Anastasia, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas, watched eagerly for her grandmother's arrival.

No sign of the dear old lady yet, she grew restless and badgered her sisters into dancing with her until their feet ached and they -ignoring her protests, and the faces she pulled at them, both pleading and mocking- sat down. Even Maria, who would have cut off her own right arm if it would have done her little sister any good, gave way to exhaustion and plopped herself into one of the miniature thrones in front of the grander one, saved -tonight, anyway- for their grandmother's use.

But Anastasia, who wasn't a bit tired, was saved from having to sit out the next dance by Nicholas himself, who laughed and called her _Shvibzik_, sweeping her up off the floor.

As they spun, Anastasia noticed her mother standing to her father's right, laughing. Oh, how _beautiful_ she looked, dressed in a splendid blue-and-gold outfit just like her daughters'!

Mama didn't have a headache today! Mama was going to dance with them. For_ once_ she was going to be merry and delightful, and everybody would see what poor mama was really like, when she wasn't too ill to be in public!

Anastasia was so happy, she felt full to bursting.

Her joy only increased when at last she spotted her grandmother walking up the dais, waving. "Hello, Darling!"

Still in the air, Anastasia laughed, "Oh, Papa!"

As soon as she was set down, Anastasia ran to her sisters. "Quick, Tatiana! Where's that picture I drew for Grandmama?"

"I don't know," yawned Tatiana, waving a pearl-crusted fan in front of her face. "Can't you keep track of your own things?"

"Where did you last see it?" Maria asked, eager to help, lifting herself up and swirling her skirts, as if she expected her sister's lost drawing to fall out of the folds.

"_I've _got your picture, Anastasie," her eldest sister Olga told her, holding it out. "But I don't think you should give it to Grandmama."

She put her hands on her hips, indignant. "Why not?"

"Because, little imp," laughed Olga, "it looks like a pig riding a donkey."

"It does _not_!" Anastasia stamped her foot.

"All right, but don't say I didn't warn you." Olga held out the picture to her.

Maria smiled kindly. "_I _think it's a nice picture."

"Alexei can draw better than that," sighed Tatiana, taking Olga's part.

Anastasia snatched it as roughly as she could without tearing it, let out a frustrated huff, and rushed past their thrones to her grandmother, holding out the picture.

"Oh, thank you, my darling!" Her grandmother smiled enthusiastically. "What a lovely drawing. And you've made it for _me_?"

She nodded rapidly.

The dowager reached out and touched her cheek. "You precious little thing! I'll keep it forever."

Anastasia looked over her shoulder at Olga and stuck out her tongue. _Ha!_ she thought smugly. That'll show her. Grandmama _loves _it!

"Perhaps I shall even hang it on the wall when I return to Paris," she went on. "How would you like that?"

Anastasia's head whipped back around and her face became instantly crestfallen. "Do you _have _to go?"

"You know I must."

"Please don't!" Anastasia knew it was hopeless, but she was only eight, and to an eight year old nearly anything -even a hopeless thing- is possible. If only you can make people agree and do what you want. "Stay here. Russia's so lovely. It's snowing again, and everything looks so clean and quiet and_ pretty_! I bet the snow in Paris isn't half as good. And..." She thought furiously for something to add. "And you needn't worry about putting Papa out for four o'clock rations, because I'll give you half of _my_ tea. I won't be a bit hungry, because there's always a great deal more food at lunch and breakfast we can both fill up on. Oh, say you'll stay! _Please_."

Without another word, the dowager reached into her silk-lined purse and pulled out a gold-and-green box about the size of her fist.

Anastasia gasped. "For _me_?" She took it in her hands, holding it gingerly between her fingertips as if it were glass. "Is it a jewelry box?"

A few feet away, a curious boy was watching them, eating an apple he'd taken the liberty of pilfering.

It was at this point that an upper servant spotted him. "Dimitri! You belong in the kitchen!"

For what it was worth, Dimitri wasn't going easily. He was carried off kicking and flailing, inwardly bemoaning the loss of the apple as it fell to the ground. Cook was going to be angry anyway, possibly even punish him, so he might as well drag this out.

"Look." The dowager took out a necklace with a gleaming round pendant and pressed it into the box, turning it in a clockwise motion.

The circular lid opened, revealing dancing miniatures of Anastasia's mama and papa spinning in front of a crowned white swan with its wings spread out. A tune accompanied the dancers.

At once, Anastasia knew it.

"It plays our lullaby!" she cried out in delight.

"You can play it at night before you go to sleep," the dowager told her. "And pretend it is_ me_ singing."

Anastasia beamed. Her grandmother took her hand and spun her in time with the tinkling music.

The lid closed on its own, young Alexandra and Nicholas sinking back into their golden box, ending the song.

"Read what it says." The dowager handed her the necklace.

Screwing up her face and crossing her eyes to focus, Anastasia squinted at the little pendant. "Together...in...Paris..." she got out, with some difficulty. Realization dawned. "_Really_?" She flung herself into her grandmother's arms. "Oh, Grandmama!"

In less than three minutes the dowager was assuring her that yes, of course Maria could come too, and yes she could bring her dog Pooka if she really wanted.

"When?" she asked, pulling away. "Oh, do tell me when!"

"Soon, my darling, soon. Maybe I'll even take you back with me when I go. How would you like that?"

"Will you ask Mama tonight?"

"I'll ask your _papa_ tomorrow morning," she corrected her.

The dowager loved her entire family, but she and Alexandra had never gotten on particularly well. It was all too obvious that, at the very mention of one of her precious children (possibly _two_, since Anastasia didn't like to be separated from Maria) being taken away to Paris, even just for a mere visit, Alexandra was likely to go into hysterics.

If Nicky spoke to her first, reassuring her that it was only for a little while, all might be well.

She'd have loved to take Alexei, too, so she could watch the three little ones tear around her royal garden and fill that all too quiet Paris palace with laughter, but such was as impossible as she herself staying here for good. Alexandra would never forgive her -or even Nicholas, love of her life though he was- if they took her baby, her little sunbeam, from her.

And, naturally, there was his health to think of. The poor boy had inherited the bleeding disease, and if he bumped himself in the palace and his blood refused to clot, pooling into joints and out of even the smallest scrape on his skin, his grandmother had to admit she would not quite know what to do. She doubted those sweet little girls, his adoring youngest sisters, would know either. So it was best not to put them in that situation.

She would speak to her son at breakfast tomorrow. Preferably before Alexandra came down. This in itself would be easy enough; Alexandra always had a hard time getting up in the morning, whereas both she and Nicholas were early risers.

* * *

Dimitri had escaped from the kitchen again. Unfortunately, his apple was long gone. Already rolled away somewhere. His stomach gurgled. He wasn't going to be getting much supper -if any- tonight. Not when Cook found out he'd snuck into the Romanov party _twice_...

Across the room, so far out he almost didn't dare even _dream_ of getting in that deep unnoticed, there were two tables set with white silk tablecloths and big silver trays full of all sorts of pastries and other delicacies Dimitri was never allowed to taste.

Oh, how _good_ it looked! God, he'd sell his soul to Baba Yaga herself for just a couple bites of vatrushka!

Surely no one would notice just one going missing?

Maybe not, but they _would_ see a shabbily dressed boy sticking out like a sore thumb.

Unless... There _were _a lot of younger men of small stature here tonight, brought along with their courtly fathers and elder brothers. Supposing he just borrowed a fancy coat (he knew which room they were being kept in) and shuffled out there and got himself a vatrushka?

Smiling mischievously to himself, Dimitri spun around on his heels and ran off to get a coat. He avoided the most lavish, since he was trying _not_ to draw attention to himself, though even the simplest one he could find was lined with real black bear fur.

It trailed at his feet, like a short train at a funeral procession or an undertaker's wedding, but he ignored that and prayed no one would notice. He'd decided if anyone asked who he was, he'd tell them he was Alexei Romanov.

The Tsarevich was actually over four years _younger _than he was, but he hoped not everyone present here would know that. At least, not off the top of their heads. By the time they remembered Nicholas had only had a male heir for five years, he could be back in the kitchen, scrubbing pots and pans, blending in with the other servants.

* * *

The stolen pastry had barely touched Dimitri's lips when a small voice from beside his knee chirruped, "You there!"

Taking a rushed, oversized bite, Dimitri mumbled, mouth so full cottage cheese was coming out the corners, "It's okay, I'm Alexei Romanov."

"No you aren't!" cried the voice, somewhere between indignant and amused. "_I_ am."

Dimitri swallowed, horrified by his own stupidity. He glanced guiltily down at the richly-dressed, serious-faced boy. "Uh..."

Alexei burst into unexpected laughter. "You're funny! How _do_ you make your whole face go green like that? The filling makes it look like you are foaming at the mouth. How clever of you!"

Was this _not_ the part where he was hauled off to an execution for stealing food and impersonating the Tsarevich? Dimitri could only gawk.

"I had a dog once who foamed at the mouth. His name was Joy. Papa had to shoot him." Apparently oblivious to the continued stricken expression on the kitchen boy's face, Alexei kept prattling on. "I think it would be just _awful_ to be shot, even if it was to keep someone -or something- else alive, don't you? I cried more because of_ that_ -the thought of the bullet in my doggie's head- than losing Joy in the first place."

"I have to go, your highness," Dimitri tried.

Alexei grabbed onto his hand, ignoring this. "Can you make that face again? Your face isn't so green now. I want you to show Ana."

"Ana?" he repeated dumbly.

"My _sister_," Alexei said, rather slowly and precociously, as though he suddenly suspected his new amusement was short on brains. "She makes the best funny faces. But _she_ can't make her face green. Mashka turned green once when she ate too many chocolates, only that wasn't funny. Not even when she threw up on Gilliard. It stank too bad to be funny. Mama was real upset."

"I don't want to meet anyone," said Dimitri. "I...I'm not really a guest here." The game was already up. What else could he do? At least he was throwing himself on the mercy of a seemingly innocent child and not a furious adult with access to a royal firing squad.

"Course not." Alexei regarded him almost coldly. "You have soot stains on your breeches under that coat. Ana won't care, though. _I_ don't." He gestured across the ballroom to where Anastasia Romanov was playing with the music box Dimitri had seen the dowager empress give her earlier. "Let's go."

"Alexei?" a shrill voice cried, aghast. "What are you doing out of bed? Mama said you need your rest."

"Oh, poo, it's Governess!" Alexei squeezed Dimitri's hand with a shockingly vice-like grip for such a frail little boy. "She's seen me!"

A remarkably beautiful girl -her face so pretty it hurt to look at it directly for too long- was coming towards them, wearing the same dress as Anastasia Romanov. Why should a governess be allowed to wear matching clothes to a grand duchess? And wasn't she a little _young_ to be in charge of the children?

"_She_ is your governess?" Dimitri was forgetting himself. He'd never seen such a lovely, finely clothed lady so close up before.

"No, stupid, she's my second sister!" Alexei started tugging at him now. "Come on, we've got to get out of here!"

"What?"

"Come on! This way! If we wait any longer she'll _catch_ us!"

Dimitri was helpless; he allowed Alexei to lead him off, out of the room, into some marble vestibule he'd never been in before. He was panting when the Tsarevich finally let go of his hand and let him stop at the base of a cold, gleaming staircase.

"_Why_," he gasped out, leaning heavily against the banister and kneeling on the last step, "do you call your sister _Governess_?"

Alexei looked proud. "It was Ana's idea. Tatiana likes bossing us around; it's the same as having Mama or a tutor watching you, having _her _about."

Dimitri nodded. It might get a person into trouble, not at least _pretending_ to agree with the statements of the future Tsar. Even if he was just a little pipsqueak now.

"Play with me," the Tsarevich ordered next.

"I..."

"Let's slide down the banister!" He started climbing the stairs, looking over his shoulder and motioning for Dimitri to follow. "Come on."

Dimitri found himself smiling as he took off the fur coat and climbed after Alexei. This royal kid might be a little bratty, but there was something endearing about him all the same. He'd never had a brother, his parents having died shortly after he -their first and only child- was born. Part of him always wondered what it would be like having an underling about. Or even just another little boy around to play with on those ever-rarer days off.

With a whoop of delight, Alexei slid down, arms out to the sides like an eagle. "_Yeep-piiiiiiiiiiiiieeee_!"

Dimitri began to laugh. Then the crash came and he stopped mid-cackle. Something was horribly wrong. The Tsarevich was lying on the ground by the last step, holding his knee and crying, "Mama! Oh, God, _Mama_! Tatya! Papa!" His cries became worse, tears streaming down his face as he howled.

Dimitri jumped down the stairs, taking two steps at a time to get to the boy as quickly as possible. "What's wrong?"

"My knee," sobbed the boy. "My _knee_..."

* * *

A dark shadow fell upon the ballroom. Some of the guests gasped, stepping out of the way of a tall figure in monk robes with a little white bat on his shoulder and a glowing reliquary slapping against his hip.

One woman's hands shook so badly she dropped her wineglass on the floor.

The figure, grinning evilly, his eyes wild, didn't even bother going around the broken glass. His boots came down hard, grinding their shards into sharp dust.

His name was Rasputin. Once, not so very long ago, the Romanovs had thought him to be a holy man -one with a divine power they desperately needed- but he was a fraud; power mad and dangerous.

Tsar Nicholas approached, looking furious. "How dare you return to the palace!"

Rasputin feigned shock. "But... I am your confidant."

"Confidant?" snorted Nicholas. "Ha! You are a _traitor_!" He stretched out his hand. "_Get out_!"

"You think you can banish the great Rasputin," he fumed, lifting up his reliquary. His already frightening face made worse by the spreading green light. "By the unholy powers vested in me, I banish_ you_. With a _curse_!"

Back up on the dais with the dowager, perhaps to thank her one more time for the music box before she was sent off to bed, Anastasia gasped at this threat and reached for her grandmother's hands. She didn't notice that only a few inches from darling Grandmama's throne, was Dimitri, also shell-shocked by Rasputin's words. He'd come running back for help after Alexei's injured knee began to swell and turn purple.

"Mark my words," continued Rasputin, pointing emphatically at Nicholas. "You and your family will die within the following decade." Lifting the reliquary even higher, he aimed it at a golden chandelier. "I will not rest until I see the end of the Romanov line forever!" Green light shot out of the reliquary, sending the chandelier crashing down.

Maria and Tatiana grabbed onto their mother, pressing against her sides. Maria was crying. Rasputin had always frightened her the most. She was a sensitive little thing; even when he was supposed to be their friend, she had seen no compassion in his eyes.

"You'll be all right, my treasures," Alexandra whispered. She tightened her grip on Tatiana's waist protectively, ignoring the wet feel of Maria's snot pooling on her skirt. "Don't listen to him. Don't listen to a single word. Pray. Pray for his misguided soul. God will protect us."

Olga clung to no one. She only watched her Papa intently, fists clenched. He had never let her -or her sisters and brother- down before. She was sure he would not -_could _not- do so now. He'd stop Rasputin. He_ would_!

"I will not stand for this!" cried one guest, who happened to be a distant relation to the Romanovs. He drew a pistol from his fur-lined boot and pointed it.

For one horrible moment, Olga thought -perhaps irrationally, perhaps prophetically- the gun was for her father. That they were angry Rasputin had not been imprisoned or sentenced to death for his treason, even having left open the _chance_ that he might come back to the palace like this, and they wanted to kill Nicholas for it. Even if it made them traitors, too.

She rushed forward. "Papa!"

If she hadn't come running, she wouldn't have seen -at least not at such close range. The bullets hitting Rasputin again and again, hot blood splattering and pooling everywhere and the unholy creature from hell not even sinking to his knees, still standing like a pillar.

One blood splatter hit her left cheek. It was too much for her. Tatiana might have been all right, or Anastasia, who had the strongest stomach of them all, but Olga couldn't handle it.

She felt her knees giving way, even as Rasputin's refused.

Strong arms grasped her, holding her up. "It's all right, child, it's all right. I've got you."

She glimpsed a vaguely familiar face -that of Vladimir, a member of the imperial court who had always been kind to her and her siblings, once slipping candies into Anastasia and Alexei's coat pockets for them to find later, but of whom she personally knew very little- before her world went black.

"_Olenka_!" The Tsarina sounded anguished. "Tatiana, take Marie." Letting of Tatiana's waist, Alexandra rose up and pushed her daughters together. "And for God's sake don't watch."

Maria shut her eyes tight and locked her arms around Tatiana's waist.

Lifting her skirts, Alexandra made a run for the wounded yet unfallen Rasputin, snatching the reliquary and dropping it. When it didn't shatter, she stamped on it with her gem-encrusted heels. With each stamp, she made an accusation. "This is for Alexei! This is for Russia!" Cracks appeared. One more stamp would finish the job. "And _this_... This is for _you_, Our Friend, Messenger of God! Hell is where you will rot for your blasphemy and treason."

Blood was already coming out of his mouth, but it wasn't until the light went out of the broken reliquary that it went out of his eyes as well.

* * *

Although many of the guests were engaged in a heated dispute over what to do with Rasputin's body and blood, it soon wasn't _Rasputin's _blood Nicholas was concerned about.

Alexei had had to be helped into bed, his cries having turned to pitiful moans of the sort no child that age should ever have a reason to let out, the doctor called in, the girls privately herded out of the ruined ball and into their brother's bedroom (except for Olga, who'd been carried to her own bed), and now something had to be done about this kitchen boy.

This kitchen boy who now knew the Romanov family's deepest, darkest secret. This kitchen boy whose head held the knowledge that Russia's future Tsar was a hemophiliac.

Nicholas rubbed his forehead, troubled. "What are we going to do, Sunny?"

Alexandra was busy smoothing a lock of Alexei's hair. "Try and lie still, Baby."

"Sunny!"

"Nicky, our son is in pain! I will discuss no one's fate in front of my ailing child. Do you _want_ to get his pulse racing? Baby sleeps, _then_ we talk about that devilish playmate he found from God knows where."

I'm _dead_, thought Dimitri, overhearing this. Deader than dead.

The Tsarina had barely looked at him, and never directly, but from those glances out of the corner of her eye, it wasn't hard to gather that all she was thinking was how _dare_ he -some no account rascal- all put push her precious baby boy down the stairs! Who did he think was?

Here was not a woman who would believe him if he told her the truth: that Alexei slid down the banister of his own free will. Dimitri would have hated her for that, but it was hard not to admire a woman who could fearlessly smash a reliquary under her heel to protect her family.

He had not been permitted to sit, but he could still lean against the wall, pressing his head back against the plaster, awaiting his certain death.

Something landed at his feet. A tiny piece of chocolate wrapped in silver foil. Someone had thrown it at him.

No, _to_ him...

Dimitri glanced up to see one of the princesses hurrying to rejoin her sisters, glued to their mother's side.

At first he thought it was Anastasia, but he could hear her music box playing in the Tsarevich's room, less than three feet away. Probably to try and keep Alexei's mind off his pain.

It must have been the second youngest, the grand duchess Maria.

She _did_ have a reputation for kindness, even among the servants, just as Anastasia had a reputation for mischief, but why should she be kind to _him_? Especially since, to all appearances, he'd just about _killed_ her little brother.

Whatever the reason, Dimitri unwrapped the chocolate, grateful, and let it melt on his tongue.

A last meal. Or last_ taste_, more like.

Either way, if one had to die with just one last essence on one's tongue, chocolate wasn't such a bad choice.

* * *

"We could dismiss him," was Cook's cold suggestion. "A boy with no money and a grudge against his former employers could hardly be taken seriously. If he tells of Alexei's illness, no one will listen. Or I can personally see to it that he works nowhere of consequence again. That should help."

"That would be a death sentence," said Maria, though she wasn't supposed to be butting in, or even there at all.

The 'little pair', which was apparently what the family called Anastasia and Maria, had been ordered to bed almost twenty minutes ago. It was only the stress of the situation that prevented Alexandra from noticing their uncharacteristic (at least on Maria's part) disobedience.

Nicholas noticed, and arched a brow, as if warning Maria she'd best keep quiet if she didn't want him to openly acknowledge her presence and send her off with a scolding he didn't really wish to give.

"A death sentence -a _real_ one- might be kinder," said Botkin, the family doctor, cleaning his spectacles. "Has he no relatives?"

"Let's put him in a madhouse," suggested Anastasia, grinning impishly. "I've always wanted to say I knew somebody in an asylum!"

Nicholas shot _her_ the look now.

She crumbled and cowered. "Sorry."

If she wasn't a princess, Dimitri would have wanted to smack her. Mostly because, even with that demure apology, she didn't _look _sorry. Not one bit.

"He has no relatives I've ever known of," Cook assured them. "No mother or father, that much is certain."

Vladimir came into the room now, though it was clear enough he'd been listening in the doorway for most of the conversation up to this point.

"Oh, it is you." Alexandra gave him one of her rare, appreciative smiles. "Thank you for what you did for Olga earlier."

"It was my pleasure, Your Majesty," he said, bowing. "I hope she will quickly recover."

"We'll send Botkin to examine her to be sure, but hopefully it was only a bad case of nerves," Alexandra said. "I'm surprised Marie managed not to faint."

"How is the Tsarevich?"

"Resting, at last," she sighed. "Now we must settle on what is to be done with this unruly servant."

"I should say unfortunate as much as unruly, if you would pardon my saying so," spoke Vladimir boldly. "Perhaps if the boy promises to keep quiet..."

"How could we be sure he would keep his word?" asked Alexandra.

"Could we trust him on it?" added Nicholas warily.

"_I_ wouldn't," said Cook.

Dimitri's anger turned from Anastasia, who was only a playful girl after all, not a true enemy, to Cook's cruelty. He glared daggers at the man he assumed was now his former employer. Whatever happened next, death or not, he was surely not to be kept on in the kitchens after this screw up.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Anastasia sticking her tongue out at the cook, and immediately liked her again, forgiving her completely now.

"Perhaps the accident," suggested Vladimir, "occurred because the Tsarevich is over-eager for another boy to play with. He has only his sisters -and his English cousins when he is well enough to travel. Could it not be a good thing if the boy was kept on as a sort of companion?"

Alexandra was already shaking her head rapidly. If Vladimir had not helped Olga earlier, she'd have been furious with him and sent him from the room for his impertinence. The idea that Alexei, her precious Sunbeam, should have a companion so unsuited, so randomly falling into their circle... It was monstrous!

But Nicholas, for once, thought differently. He was used to not thinking at all, when he didn't need to, and letting Alexandra have her way, yet in this case it was his son's well-being alone he was concerned with. Not so much his wife's feelings on the matter. He might feel guilty for being so callous towards the love of his life's opinion later, but right now he harbored no such self-reproach.

"He_ does_ need a peer group, Alix," he said quietly.

"But this waif is no peer group; he's only a kitchen boy," piped Tatiana, putting her hand on her mother's shoulder.

If she had said it meanly, with contempt, as most royals might have said something like that, she'd have seemed cruel, but she hadn't spoken that way at all. She'd said it only as if stating a practical fact. It did make her look less beautiful somehow, though, very like a no-nonsense school mistress, and Dimitri finally thought he understood why her siblings called her Governess.

"I can't vouch for him," said Cook, sucking his teeth. "If you make an idle companion of him, he'll quickly become lazy and spoiled. He has the temperament for that. You won't get him to remember his place for long. Soon he'll be acting as if he was a Tsarevich himself."

"He needn't be idle," said Botkin. "I can use assistance with medicines when I am in the palace, and any assistant of mine would need some training. I won't have some unstudied _idiotka_ handing me medicines. He'll not have a degree, or be able to work anywhere else, but it _would _be something to remind him he is still a servant. Not a royal child by adoption, like this is a reward for his poor behavior."

Nicholas nodded. "This is good. The boy shall become a member of the household servants." He turned to Dimitri. "Your place will be with Alexei from now on, and you shall only go into the kitchens when we are short-handed or Botkin has no current task for you. Your presence within the family is to center on Alexei. Give him attention and friendship, then go about your other duties when he -or another member of my family- dismisses you. It is of course a given that you will not tell a single soul of the Tsarevich's condition."

* * *

Anastasia was not supposed to be in her brother's bed. Alexandra was too afraid she would bump him accidentally and make his injury worse. But all four girls loved Alexei dearly, and Anastasia was his particular favorite, since she didn't refuse him anything that was deemed 'not good for his health'. So she had not be able to say no when asked for her to sneak back in and keep him company. He had several medicines for pain coursing through him now, that made him both groggy and unable to fall asleep properly.

Still, at least it was warm and comfortable, half-dozing with Anastasia's arms around him.

Her feet had been cold when she first came in, but they were as toasty as his own now, and he didn't mind occasionally brushing up against them once they reached room temperature.

Something hit the window, making Alexei jolt up, raising his sister with him. "Ana! _Listen_! There's something at the window!"

She yawned and pulled her arms back. "It's the snow."

"Snow doesn't make noise."

"Wind, then."

"You sound like Tatiana." He pushed her lightly. "Look! There _is _something there, too big to be a snowflake."

Anastasia got up and tip-toed to the window, unlatching it.

"A Romanov!" cried the little creature that fell in, over the sill.

"It's Rasputin's bat!" Alexei exclaimed.

"Don't worry, I'll kill it." Anastasia ran to the fireplace and grabbed a poker, brandishing it like a sword.

"Hey, what's with all the killing, little Romanov?" said the bat, looking dismayed. "What did I ever to do you?"

"You worked for Rasputin," said Anastasia simply, swinging the poker like a stage-actor. "He tried to hurt my brother. And he let Mama think he could _cure _him! And you helped!"

"Oh, sure, blame the bat, what the heck, we're easy targets." All he'd ever really done was perch on his master's shoulder and try to look menacing.

Anastasia felt herself lowering the poker. Now that they were conversing, it was getting harder to want to kill this creature. "But your master did try and kill us. He cursed us before he died today."

"Well, I _told_ him it wasn't a good idea. I said we should just go for the party, but he was all, _let's crush the Romanovs_." The bat's white wings lifted in a shrug. "And now he's dead. Dead, dead, dead."

"He won't come back to life?" Anastasia whispered, as if a little afraid.

"Not after they pitched his body in that frozen river back there."

"What's your name?" Alexei called from bed.

"Bartok."

"I'm Alexei." He pointed to his sister. "She's Anastasia."

Bartok bowed.

"It must be cold out there," Anastasia noted, shivering.

"Oh it is," Bartok agreed.

"Are you all alone now?" she asked.

"As alone as a bat can get."

"Then you will be _my_ bat," decided Alexei. "Bring him here, Ana. He can sleep in my pocket."

"I don't know-" began Bartok, stopping as Anastasia scooped him up. "Uh, okay."

"I like bats," Alexei said somberly as Anastasia slipped Bartok into the breast pocket of his sleeping shirt. "Sleep tight, Bartok. Don't let the bed bugs bite, Ana."

Looking at the sleeping children, Bartok considered flying away the minute their eyes shut, but something held him back. They didn't _look_ evil; no matter what Rasputin had always said about the wickedness of all Romanovs. And it _was_ pretty warm and snugly here. Rasputin had never let him cuddle at night, even when it was icy cold out.

He glanced both ways, as if to be sure there weren't any other bats at the window watching him, ready to start pointing and laughing, and then he lowered his head onto Alexei's gently rising and falling chest.

_Long live the Romanovs_, thought Bartok, as sleep overtook him.

**AN: This prologue is a two-parter. The next part will take place six months later, and then the first official chapter will begin, ten years later.**

**Please Review. **


	2. Prologue: Part Two

_Prologue: Part 2_

Dimitri had been with the Romanovs as Alexei's companion for six months. He hadn't seen much of the princesses. Olga and Tatiana were busy with their lessons most of the time, and Anastasia and Maria had returned to Paris with the dowager, despite many tears (and rants, which Dimitri felt rather embarrassed to have overheard but Alexei seemed shockingly unaffected by, casually slipping pastry crumbs to the little bat he kept in his pocket as if nothing particularly exciting was happening) on the Tsarina's part.

In the end, Nicholas had sided with his mother and Alexandra eventually gave in, allowing the little pair to go to France.

Today, though, they were returning. A fact that Alexei seemed extremely excited about.

"We're going out to the station to meet them!" Alexei exclaimed, limping over to Dimitri to tell him all about it. "And we get to ride in our own sleigh; just you and me and Bartok on the way over, then Mashka and Ana with us on the way back to the palace. Pulled by _my_ donkey." He stopped. "Do you know how to hitch a donkey to a sleigh, Dimitri?"

"Yes, of course," said Dimitri, though that wasn't strictly true. He'd seen it done a couple of times, by imperial grooms, but he'd never so much as _tried_ to do such a task himself.

Or even paid particularly close attention when watching the grooms.

Luckily, a somewhat more skilled servant was on hand when Dimitri had to pay for his little fib by hitching up the donkey with no assistance, and quietly pointed to anything important he missed that could allow the donkey to get lose and the sleigh upset without alerting Alexei or the tsar to Dimitri's incompetence.

When it was finished, he mouthed a short, "_Thank you_," to the servant and then hopped in beside the Tsarevich, looking straight ahead as if nothing had gone wrong.

As soon as they were beyond the palace gates, Dimitri began to enjoy himself. He'd ridden in a hard wooden wagon before with Cook (it had not been a pleasurable experience), but never in a silver-and-gold sleigh with jingling bells! And he definitely hadn't been wrapped in furs during his wagon ride; his old coat of many patches had just barely succeeded in its job of keeping him from freezing to death.

The only part of him that was truly cold on this ride was his nose. And that was in no danger of being frostbitten, since whenever they stopped the procession for the tsar to come over and check that Alexei's nose was not being harmed from exposure, he -out of pure kindness, not duty- checked Dimitri's nose too.

It was a little strange to have the Tsar of all Russia tapping at your nose with his big soft leather glove, but you got used to it after the first couple times.

They reached the station -Alexei happily crying "_Whoa_, Vanka!" and pulling back on his donkey's reins- just as the imperial train arrived.

Maria stepped off the train first. Her arms full of what looked like wrapped presents decorated with _way_ too many large red bows, she lost her balance and tripped, falling face first onto the ground before a servant rushed over to make certain she was all right, helping her back onto her feet. She'd scraped her chin up pretty badly, but aside from that she seemed fine.

Better still when she noticed the Tsar and Tsarina jumping down from their grand sleigh (a bigger version of Alexei's).

"Mama, Papa!" She dropped the presents on the ground and ran into their open arms.

Anastasia was next. She had a fine new hat lined and decorated with what looked like reddish-orange fox fur and a matching stole around her shoulders. She gave her coat pocket (where her music box was) a little pat, straightened out the stole, made a face at one of the train conductors, then hopped off.

She grinned widely at Nicholas and Alexandra, but it was Alexei she rushed over to first.

"Ana!"

"Alyosha!"

She accidentally elbowed Dimitri in the eye while throwing herself into the sleigh to hug her little brother.

"Anastasia!" Alexandra scolded. "You need to be more careful! You_ know _you can't hug Alexei so roughly! What if you'd bumped him too hard?"

Oh, _I'm_ fine, thought Dimitri, grouchily. She's just about put out my eye, but I'm _fine_...

"I'm sorry, Mama." Anastasia batted her eyes, fluttering her lashes dramatically.

"That only works on your Papa," Alexandra told her, cracking a smile in spite of herself. "It's good to have you back, though, darling."

Maria, untangling herself from her father's arms, slipped quietly onto the sleigh beside Dimitri, gave him a friendly smile, then leaned over him to wave to Alexei on his other side.

A minute later, Tatiana and Olga had gotten off the sleigh they'd ridden on -along with Gilliard and Botkin (whose lessons, though Dimitri's salvation, were also the bane of his existence)- and crowed around the little pair, kissing their cheeks and smoothing their hair.

* * *

For Dimitri, the ride back to the palace was not nearly as nice as the trip to the station. For one thing, even though Anastasia and Maria's crowding into the sleigh with them meant more warmth, it also meant being smushed awkwardly against a grand duchess every time Alexei's donkey turned a sharp corner. And Dimitri was right at the age when this starts to feel unnerving, but not the age that a boy knows_ why_ it's unnerving.

It didn't help matters any that Anastasia and Alexei were singing _Ninety-nine Bottles Of Vodka On The Wall_ on an almost endless loop at the top of their lungs.

Dimitri didn't think they were_ ever_ going to stop. Indeed, they probably _wouldn't_ have, if Alexandra hadn't overheard them when Nicholas stopped the sleighs to check on the children's noses and told Anastasia that it was a 'highly inappropriate song for a young lady' and to 'leave off' at once.

At his feet, Anastasia's slobbering gray mutt of a dog, Pooka, chased Alexei's Bartok (who had somehow gotten -or perhaps_ fallen_- out of his young master's pocket) around the bottom of the sleigh, so that it was virtually impossible to relax for longer than three seconds before feeling an animal run over your toes.

Maria endured any discomforts the ride brought her good-naturedly, seeming content enough to be on her way home again, while Alexei and Anastasia were just too happy to be back in each others' company to care about anything else; but Dimitri had a nagging feeling that -for good or (more likely) for bad- Anastasia's return was going to bring about massive changes to the routine he had finally gotten used to.

If it hadn't been for the memory of that tongue she stuck out at Cook six months ago, he might have resented her for it.

But, of course, he had to remind himself, Anastasia had far more right to be back here than_ he_ did.

He wouldn't prove Cook right by letting himself get carried away.

* * *

There was an art, Anastasia decided, to sculpting the perfect snowball. One needed to put the wetter, sticky snow closer to the middle, then put the powdery stuff that most people thought wasn't any good because it fell apart too easily all around it, like sugar around a pastry.

_This _snowball was particularly good because it had a teensy pebble in the middle.

Anastasia hadn't considered that it might hurt anyone. She only thought it was a good shape with which to make sure her snowball was indeed a perfectly round sphere.

She was so intent on her sculpting that she hadn't even realized she'd lost her scarf and that Pooka was currently running around with it in his mouth, trailing it in several snowbanks he busily romped through.

It would have been a great deal easier, she thought, if one could kneel and work on a snowball until it was done, but Papa _would_ insist on constantly checking to make sure she and her sisters kept moving around.

He was afraid they'd freeze solid if they didn't keep their blood pumping.

And there was no respite from her sisters, who all agreed with their Papa about what the cold would do to them if they stayed in one spot too long. Even _Bartok_ gave her a lecture about it! She was getting scolded by _bats_ now! As if tutors and Mama and the big pair (Olga and Tatiana) weren't bad enough.

Finally, though, it was done, the ball of snow every bit as wonderful as Anastasia wanted it to be. She was extremely proud of it. She would have kept it a draw to take out on occasion and show off to people, if only it wasn't made of something that _melted_...

Well, she'd best enjoy it while it lasted, then.

How better to enjoy it than to hurl it at somebody? She smirked happily to herself, thinking over who best to throw it at.

Olga was too far away; she'd never hit her from this distance. Mashka had fallen into a snowdrift, with Papa and Gilliard currently trying to help her back up. She didn't _dare_ hit Alexei, knowing what even the slightest bruise or bump could to him.

Oh, wasn't that Tatiana, building a snowman, only a few feet away? Now_ there_ was a target! No one ever tried to hit Tatiana with a snowball usually, either because they thought she was too beautiful or else logically noted that her long legs probably meant she could get away before it made contact, thus making a front attack a waste of a good snowball.

But if Anastasia were to strike from the _side_, while Tatiana was preoccupied with that snowman of hers...

Without further thought, already having long forgotten about the rock, she rushed over to her sister, wound up her arm, and threw.

Unfortunately, the snowball's path was blocked by Alexei's companion, Dimitri, who was (probably under Alexei's orders) carrying a top hat and a carrot over to Tatiana's snowman.

Tatiana no longer an option, thanks to the laws of basic physics, it sailed straight into the side of Dimitri's brow, instantly knocking him unconscious.

* * *

When Dimitri finally came to, almost twenty minutes later, Anastasia had been banished to her room to think about what she'd done, not even allowed Maria for company, scolded soundly by the Tsar and Tsarina _and_ Tatiana until she nearly burst into tears. She hadn't _meant _to hurt anybody -honest she hadn't! Not to mention, Tatiana, she'd thought, needn't have carried on so, since the snowball -although _intended _for her- had never actually hit her. _She_ wasn't the one lying unconscious, carried by a manservant of the Tsar's to the little red fainting couch in Alexei's room.

At first Dimitri had been pretty mad after waking up. How _dare_ that spoiled little princess think it was okay to give him a swelling bump on the forehead! (He had no idea, at this point, that she'd really been trying to hit her sister and he'd just gotten in the way.) He'd been trying and trying to be gracious, to remember his place, and then she had the nerve -the blasted _nerve_!- to...

Oh, how he'd like to give her a good what-for, if she wasn't a grand duchess!

Then, passing by the little pair's room, he heard muffled crying. Immediately, his anger melted like snow in the summer. It was such pitiful crying. He could almost think Anastasia _already_ felt worse about throwing that snowball than any harsh words he'd been storing up in his head could have possibly made her feel.

"Princess?" He leaned into the room. This probably was not permitted, but he wanted to make sure she was all right. Dimitri realized the irony of this fact, though at the moment, hearing her sobs and sniffles, he didn't particularly care.

She was sitting on the middle of a camp cot, wiping at her nose with the back of her sleeve.

"They took away your bed as punishment?" Dimitri blurted, a little surprised. He'd never been in any of the rooms where the grand duchesses slept, though he'd snuck into quite a few other rooms belonging to them he wasn't technically supposed to go near out of sheer curiosity.

She shook her head and wiped at her eyes. "No, we always sleep on cots."

"I thought..." Dimitri stopped. For it wasn't one of his own thoughts, really, but something he'd overheard on one of his wagon trips beyond the palace walls with Cook. Common people liked to grumble that they were so poor they could barely afford a loaf of bread and the tsar's daughters were sleeping on feather beds. "Well,_ Alexei _has a real bed. I just assumed..."

"It's because he's sick," Anastasia explained, her tears lessening from distraction. "Otherwise Papa would make him sleep on a cot too. He says it's good for us, that grandpapa made_ him_ sleep on a cot when he was a little boy."

Dimitri nodded.

Her blue eyes fixed on the lump above his brow. "I'm sorry I threw that snowball at you."

"I'm sorry you got punished for it," Dimitri admitted. "But I think you fractured part of my skull."

Rolling her -now completely dry- eyes, she muttered something that sounded like, "Boys are such babies."

"How long do you have to stay inside?"

"I'm not allowed to go out and play again until tomorrow after lessons!" She sounded rather agitated by this fact.

Dimitri felt a smirk spread across his face. "I know what might cheer you up."

"Oh?"

"I know where Princess Olga hides her diary."

Anastasia brightened like an evening star. "_Really_?"

"Yeah, Prince Alexei mentioned you were looking for it."

"Where is it?" She was practically rocking back and forth with excitement.

Dimitri quickly looked both ways, then walked all the way into the room. He leaned over the cot and whispered, "It's with her prayer books and Bibles. She puts a leather jacket over it so it looks just like them."

"Thanks!" Anastasia grinned and jumped out of the cot and onto the floor.

"You're going to look for it _now_?" he blurted.

"Yes," she said. "While they're still outside."

* * *

Anastasia was hopping up and down on a cushioned stool to reach Olga's leather-covered diary in the big pair's sitting room, when she heard footsteps behind her and, startled, fell over, landing on the carpet with a soft _thud_.

Rubbing her thigh and groaning softly, she gazed up to see her eldest sister standing above her, tapping her foot, arms folded across her chest.

She did _not_ look amused.

"_Olga_!" cried Anastasia, giggling nervously. "What a pleasant surprise."

"_Papa_!" shrieked Olga, running from the room.

Moments later, Anastasia and Dimitri were both in hard-back chairs facing the wall in the corridor outside of the tsar's office.

"I can't _believe _you told on me!" Dimitri growled, for the time being forgetting this was a princess he was addressing.

"I want quiet out there!" Nicholas roared. "Not _one_ word for the next half hour, _both _of you!"

Anastasia stuck out her tongue and waggled her hands at Dimitri, who could only glower in return for the following thirty minutes.

* * *

Anastasia and Alexei were putting folded shirts and small tin toys into a suitcase when Dimitri entered the Tsarevich's room, a couple of months after what had come to be known in the imperial household as _The Snowball Incident_.

"You better start packing, too, Dimitri," Alexei said, not looking up.

"Where are we going?" he asked, noticing the brown leather rucksack Alexei had left out -presumably for him, his companion- by the bedside where he was usually ordered to sit and read aloud when the Tsarevich was too sick to get up.

Alexei and his sister exchanged excited glances, practically bubbling over with joy.

"_Livadia_!" they chorused.

* * *

Livadia was, apparently, another word for_ heaven_. Dimitri instantly understood why the Romanovs were so besotted with the their beloved seaside palace. What he didn't understand was why they couldn't just live there all year round. Alexei told him he'd asked his papa once, and Nicholas had just smiled wistfully, as if he himself would have liked nothing better, and said, a little sadly, "It is simply not the way things are done, Sunbeam."

Even the trip to Livadia was something out of a fairy story. That sleigh ride to the station to retrieve Princess Anastasia and Princess Maria had been _nothing _to this.

The imperial train was like a moving luxury hotel, every bit as nice as the palace. The dining car, which Dimitri was surprised but oddly happy to see that nice court member Vladimir practically_ living_ in, had electric chandeliers of silver filigree and crystal and a separate table for the children (Alexei, the grand duchesses, and himself). In Alexei's sleeping car there was even a projector to watch films! Dimitri had never seen a moving picture before in his life, and now he was being ordered to watch one after another with the Tsarevich. Anastasia joined them occasionally, but she only liked the funny films with slapstick humor and always left right after they were over to find some other amusement.

For the most part, the princesses played a lot of cards (though never for money, since the Tsarina forbade them to gamble) and talked about what they would do when they finally arrived in Livadia.

Since Alexei wasn't currently hurt, and there weren't many places he _could_ hurt himself on the plush train (short of literally jumping out of it while it was moving), he -and Dimitri by default- were mostly left to their own devices.

Then it had only gotten better when the journey came to its end. Dimitri learned that Cook had not come with the other lower servants. That he would not be in Livadia with them for an entire week! During which time, another chef, who lived fairly locally, had been temporarily employed.

Botkin had come, of course, but Livadia seemed to relax him, causing him to be less strict about Dimitri's training. If he fell asleep on the palace veranda for a couple of hours with no one nearby to wake him, and a lesson or two was missed as a result, he seemed to think it no big deal if Alexei's companion went for a swim (though the sea water was awfully cold) or spent some time running around outside as young boys like to do.

The tsar, spotting him jogging through the trees once, pleased that he was an active child and not a lazy lie-about, offered him the use of a bicycle or a pair of roller-skates that were too small for Tatiana's long feet now but would likely fit his.

The grand duchesses were not so lucky, their tutors never falling asleep, yet they seemed so happy to be where they were that for once even Anastasia grumbled very little.

Of course, this heaven could not last. Dimitri was quickly given a reminder of his place -a reminder that none of this was truly his- with the return of Cook.

Although he was supposed to help in the kitchens when Botkin had no use for him, the kitchen staff here at Livadia didn't seem to want him around. Unlike at the Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg -where he had long been known as an easily disposable serving boy _before_ becoming companion to the Tsarevich- he was regarded as just another upper manservant to the royals. The staff chased him away from their soapy sinks and hot ovens with the same vim they shooed off the Tsarina's favorite handmaidens.

So, kicked out of the kitchen with strict orders from a woman brandishing a wooden spoon not to come back until suppertime, Dimitri set off in search of other endeavors.

Alexei was asleep in a wheelchair next to Botkin's chaise lounge. Tatiana was sewing with her mother. Tsar Nicholas was swimming in the frigid sea water. Anastasia and Maria were having French lessons with Gilliard.

The only person who was reasonably unoccupied was Olga, setting up a wooden chess set on the veranda.

In all honesty, Dimitri was a little scared of her, since she hadn't said a word to or about him since he'd told Anastasia where she hid her diary, but he finally decided to approach, even if just to watch her play against herself for a bit.

After the pieces were in place, all the chessmen perfectly lined up, Olga spotted Dimitri standing there with his hands behind his back.

She put her hand to her heart, momentarily startled. "Oh, it's you."

"I didn't mean to scare you," he mumbled, not quite meeting her eyes.

She shook her head. "It's all right. It is hardly your fault that I am easily startled."

He shifted from foot to foot, uneasily.

"Do you play?" Olga asked.

He nodded. "A little."

"Please..." She gestured at the chessboard. "Sit."

He bobbed an awkward bow and sat.

"I'm glad you came," she said, throwing her voice grandly. "I hate playing the game by myself." Her index finger rested on the cross on the white king's head. "It always ends in a tie."

Dimitri cracked a smile at that. "You're teasing me."

"Maybe a little," Olga admitted.

"I'm sorry I told Ana..." He stopped, realizing the mistake he'd almost made. "I mean, your sister, her royal highness Anastasia Nikolaevna, where your diary was."

Olga smiled forgivingly. "It is forgotten."

He exhaled a sharp breath of relief.

"Here, I'll go first." She moved a white pawn. "And, by the way, Dimitri, in the future, if you could please just call us by our names? It takes you too long to say anything when you use our titles. Especially the way you splutter sometimes."

"I do not splutter!" he exclaimed.

"You _do_!" she laughed. "Ask Anastasie. She does the _perfect_ impression of you trying to tell me or Tatiana anything even remotely important. It takes you five whole minutes just to get to the point. She's counted."

"_Well_!" huffed Dimitri, trying not to burst out laughing along with her.

"It is your move," Olga told him.

But just as his fingers wrapped around a pawn, a booming voice demanded to know exactly what he thought he was doing.

_Playing chess _was the obvious answer, but that would have only made the scowling cook even madder.

If he had stumbled upon Dimitri playing chess with _Alexei_, it would have been different, but he hadn't been hired on as a companion to the princesses. So it gave Cook, the way he saw it, ample cause to grab his former charge by the ear and drag him out of the chair, off the veranda, and into the kitchen where he belonged.

* * *

It was evidently an abrupt end to Dimitri's good times in Livadia. After Cook dragged him off, he spent practically every moment he was not by Alexei's side scrubbing pots and pans and carrying dishes. He was also forced to return Tatiana's skates under Cook's orders, though she reminded him it wasn't necessary since her feet no longer fit into them.

It seemed as if the beautiful dream was completely over. Cook was even stricter here than in Saint Petersburg, like he was determined to make up for Botkin's current laxness in tenfold. A single spot missed meant a cuff upside the head, and if he tried anything Cook deemed above his station, he took off his belt and gave him a good whipping.

Only once he went too far and Alexei saw a swelling red welt on his companion's arm and began to cry, thus upsetting the Tsarina.

Nicholas, once he got his wife and son to calm down, commanded that the cook learn to restrain himself or else find employment elsewhere.

Then came the day Anastasia barged into the kitchen and snatched an entire platter of Russian tea cakes out from under Cook's nose.

"Get back here!" Royal or not, she was not permitted to take those. They were for after supper, as a surprise treat for the grand duchesses, who were not usually allowed very many sweets, except on Butter Week and sometimes Easter. Not to mention there were enough on that platter she'd taken to last a _week_!

Anastasia _had _been wearing a feathered mask, as a sort of disguise, but it was obviously _her_. She was too short to pass for Olga or Tatiana, and Maria was much too timid to brave Cook the way her younger sister did.

"No chance!" she shouted, kicking down a tray of silverware onto the floor and making her getaway.

Dimitri didn't even care that _he'd_ been the one to wash all of that silverware. This was too entertaining. Never, so long as he lived, would he forget how red Cook's face was at this very moment; how flabbergasted and beside himself the horrible man was.

Cook jumped over the tray and took off after the tsar's youngest daughter with a vengeance.

Naturally, Dimitri couldn't resist following to see how it all turned out.

Cook eventually got Anastasia back in eye-range again, but he was out of breath and she was just getting her second wind.

Realizing how unlikely he was to catch her, Anastasia actually stopped and went, "_Nah, nah, nah, nah_..." a couple of times.

Suddenly, outside, cornered by a babbling brook, Cook thought he stood a chance after all. Anastasia would have to come to a halt here (it was either that or jump into the water) and then he'd take those cakes back and threaten to tell her father about this if she ever tried anything of the sort again.

But the grand duchess seemed to disappear like a mischievous imp from a fairytale. Cook couldn't spy her_ anywhere_!

Furious, all he could think was that if she was_ his_ daughter he'd whip her senseless for her behavior and that Tsar Nicholas ought to have taught the brat more manners rather than indulging her.

Really, Anastasia had not disappeared. She was hiding in the bushes. She'd bumped into Dimitri, who had hidden there to watch the rest of the spectacle and now found himself part of it. She handed him the tray of cakes, which he took gratefully, stuffing one in his mouth (Cook hadn't let him take lunch that day). Then she pressed her finger to her lip, raised her eyebrows suggestively, and cocked her head in Cook's direction.

"Boo!" She jumped out of the bushes, startling the Cook.

He teetered backwards and almost regained his balance when she reached over and gave him a little shove, giggling.

The Cook fell into the brook, thrashing in rage and immediately soaked to the bone.

Unable to hold it in, Dimitri laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard he fell to the ground and rolled out of the bushes, gasping for breath and pounding his hands into the grass and moist spoil.

Anastasia Romanov was officially his new hero.

Unfortunately, not everyone was so impressed with Anastasia's terrorizing of the cook.

Vladimir and Tsar Nicholas had been taking a walk together. Vladimir was eating a vatrushka and Nicholas had been smoking a cigarette. They'd arrived at the brook just in time to see Anastasia shove the cook into it.

Vlad almost dropped what was left of his vatruhka, and the cigarette tumbled from the tsar's open mouth.

"Hello, Papa." Anastasia waved.

Regaining his wits, Nicholas shot her a stern look.

She grimaced, taking a nervous step back. Dimitri stopped rolling and quickly made a run for it, before Cook noticed him.

The last thing he heard was Anastasia's rushed, pathetic explanation and Cook's swearing like a sailor, followed by Vladimir asking, "What became of those cakes you stole, child?"

* * *

In honor of their last day in Livadia, Anastasia and Maria arranged a surprise for the family.

They'd written a short play together while in Paris with the dowager and intended to preform it.

It was loosely based on the ball they'd had the night Rasputin was killed.

Anastasia had desperately wanted a proper reenactment, so she could play the part of Rasputin and pretend to get shot a whole bunch of times and not fall over. And, she figured, Maria could play Olga and faint dramatically. But Maria had told her she 'didn't suppose Mama would approve of such a performance' and 'had no wish to scandalize everybody' as their going away from Livadia present.

So in the end (since her co-writer was not being very helpful) she decided to make it nice. It was the ball as it _should _have gone off, more or less, had it not been interrupted by Rasputin.

Not very exciting, really, except for the big musical number, which was the only thing Anastasia got her way with.

The part of the dowager, because she was still back in Paris and couldn't appear herself, was played by Pooka. Maria put a crown on the dog and sat him on a fancy chair that vaguely resembled a throne, but the pooch had other ideas and shook the crown off, barking.

Luckily, the dowager had no lines in this production.

The audience was made up of Olga, Tatiana, the Tsar and Tsarina, Vladimir, and any servants that could be rounded up and forced to attend. This included Dimitri and Botkin, and unfortunately Cook as well, though he inwardly chafed at having to attend a play put on by the nasty little girl who'd thrown him in a brook only a few weeks before.

Alexei would have been in the audience too, but he had an actual part in the play. Even at such a young age, he was becoming quite the skilled balalaika player, so Anastasia had arranged for him to have a little solo in their musical number.

He had to be seated on a chair, however, and have someone hand him his instrument, because he'd hurt his ankle a couple days ago and the swelling was so bad he couldn't stand up for very long.

He even had to be carried into the room and helped behind the curtain to begin with.

The man who was tasked with this job was a servant named Derevenko. He was only seven or eight years older than Dimitri, and had often been charged with carrying Prince Alexei when a wheelchair was impractical for one reason or another.

There was something about Derevenko that Dimitri disliked. Whenever Alexei ordered him to do something, he always got this _look _on his face. A look that said, very plainly, "If you weren't Tsarevich, I'd drop you on your backside just for a laugh."

It was, basically, a look of restrained disgust.

Alexei, trusting soul that he was, never noticed the look, but that was likely only because no one else had ever had the gall to give it to him. Dimitri, on the other hand, knew it well. Why? Because he'd given that same look to Cook often enough.

What he couldn't for the life of him understand was why Derevenko hated the poor kid so much. Alexei was, underneath it all, just a sick child. Sure, he could be bratty, demanding, impossible, you name it. But couldn't _all _little boys? And couldn't Derevenko see that his charge had a heart of gold in spite of his many childish failings?

Dimitri was distracted from his thoughts about Derevenko as the curtain rose and the little pair's play began.

It went off well, even though Anastasia couldn't act (she was too melodramatic) and Maria couldn't sing very well (Anastasia and Tatiana had beautiful voices, Maria and Olga did not), and the doggie-grandmother went missing less than a minute into the first act.

Alexei's balalaika solo had three mistakes in it, but otherwise was very good (especially accompanied by Anastasia's disturbingly accurate impression of a French opera singer).

Only Derevenko seemed to even _notice_ the mistakes and scoffed, pretending to have a coughing fit to hide it.

As the audience was getting up to leave, Tsar Nicholas cheering, "Bravo, bravo!" while the little pair linked hands and bowed, Dimitri heard one of Cook's assistants say softly, "What a family! But so lavish! A play in the middle of the daytime -with _refreshments_! Can you imagine?"

"I often find myself doubting the Romanovs will make it another three hundred years," Derevenko said darkly. "How long do you think they'll last, Sasha?"

Dimitri knew they weren't talking to him, that he had no place in this conversation, but he cut in anyway. Staring Derevenko straight in the eye, he made a comment so full of passionate conviction he surprised even himself. "I hope it's forever."

**AN: This concludes the prologue. Next chapter will be ten years later. **


	3. Measles & Abdication

**AN: A quick note on the ages of the Romanov children in this. Since for the bulk of the movie this fic is based off of Anastasia is 18 years old, only a year older than when her historical real-life counterpart died, I have bumped up all the children's ages during their time in the House of Special purpose by one year. **

**So Anastasia is 18, Alexei is 15, Olga is 24, and so on and so forth... **

_Measles & Abdication _

_10 Years Later..._

"Papa's coming home!" Seventeen year old Anastasia Romanov raced through several corridors of the Catherine Palace, eager to alert anyone who might not yet know the wonderful news.

A woman cleaning a large oriental vase looked up as Anastasia tore across the top of the grand staircase. Shaking her head, she gave the vase an extra rub with her cloth and set it down gently.

"Papa's-" Anastasia almost banged into Lili, one of her mother's favorite ladies-in-waiting. She halted to a stop so quickly she lost her balance (despite swinging her arms frantically to regain it) and fell backwards, flat on her bottom.

"Good heavens!" gasped Lili, bending over and offering her hand to the princess. "Are you all right?"

Back on her feet, Anastasia hastily smoothed her pale purple dress and shook a lock of red hair out of her eyes. "I... I'm fine. Thank you, Lili. You can let go of my hand now."

She let go and curtsied. "Yes, of course, your highness."

"Have you heard the news?" Anastasia asked. "Papa's coming home."

"Very exciting," Lili said, smiling at her.

"He could even be back here in time for my birthday." That was the best part of all; the thought alone made the youngest grand duchess flush with delight.

"Wouldn't that be just lovely, having the tsar returning just time in time to see his little girl becoming a real lady," Lili agreed warmly, reaching out and patting the girl's cheek fondly.

The faintest squeak of a wheelchair was heard, followed by, "Oy, Ana! What's all this about Papa coming back? Nobody's told _me _anything."

Alexei had grown over the last ten years from a charming little china doll boy into a handsome lad of fifteen with a charismatic smile and gold-hued auburn hair. It was a shame, really, that he was so rarely fit to be seen in public -always recovering from this or that injury- for court ladies truly enjoyed seeing his face. His nickname, Sunbeam, had only grown more appropriate with the passing of time. One appearance from him _did_ seem to allow a trickle more light and happiness to spread into any given gathering.

The person pushing Alexei's wheelchair had also grown a great deal. Over the course of one short decade, Dimitri had gone from a scrappy kitchen boy to a well-built young man strong enough to carry the Tsarevich upstairs or over raised thresholds whenever that rat Derevenko oh so conveniently made himself scarce.

"We girls were in the room when Mama read the letter," Anastasia explained gently. "Tatiana was meant to tell you."

"Tatiana is at her lessons with Gilliard." Alexei rolled his eyes. "How _can_ she think of lessons with such exciting news?"

"That's Governess for you," laughed Anastasia.

"And you're not the least bit worried about _why_ he's coming back?" Dimitri cut in.

"I do not believe the prince and princess were addressing _you_," snapped Lili, whipping her head around and glaring at him stonily. "And, in future, you would do better to add_ if your highness will pardon_, to a callous sentence such as that!"

Anastasia stuck out her hand in Lili's direction and shook her head. "No, that's not necessary."

"Ana is right, Lili." Alexei craned his neck to look at Dimitri, giving him a kind smile. "He is my friend. He can speak as he likes."

"So, _Dimitri_," Anastasia pressed, "what was that you were saying?"

"I was _saying_," he continued, "that it's a little strange the tsar would come back now, what with all the trouble in Saint Petersburg lately."

"What trouble?" asked Alexei.

"Some people smashed the windows of a bakery and started a riot over bread," Anastasia explained with a half-shrug. "It's nothing Papa can't put right."

"How can it be nothing if he's coming home?" Dimitri put in.

Lili glared at him. Anastasia was slightly more forgiving, but her expression was hardening as well.

So much for being allowed to speak my mind, Dimitri thought.

"Maybe he's right, Ana," Alexei said softly, shifting a little in his wheelchair. "Maybe Papa's in real trouble. That would mean we're _all_ in real trouble. Danger, even."

"No, of course not!" Anastasia sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as her brother. "It's a_ good _thing Papa's coming home."

"I wonder what's going to happen to us," were his next, ominous words.

Anastasia frowned and raised an eyebrow at Dimitri, gesturing down at Alexei ever so slightly with her chin.

"I was just saying..." Dimitri tried, not quite apologetically enough.

"Don't talk anymore, okay?" Anastasia sighed, rubbing her temples. "It's only going to upset me."

"Fine." Dimitri tightened his grip on Alexei's wheelchair ever so slightly. "I'll be quiet."

She nodded somberly. "Good." She glanced over her shoulder. "Now, I have more people to share the news with, so which way was I going?"

Lili pointed behind herself with her thumb. "That way, I believe, your highness."

"Thank you." With that, Anastasia gave one last (now somewhat forced) happy smile to Alexei and brushed curtly past Dimitri.

It couldn't be a bad thing that Papa was coming back. It just _couldn't_ be!

What did a kitchen boy understand about politics anyway? Probably even less than she -youngest daughter who had no need to learn of such things- did.

Dimitri probably didn't know what in the blazes he was talking about.

And even if he did, for in spite of everything she knew a _little _of the rumors, he had_ no business_ scaring Alexei with it. Whether or not the Tsarevich gave him permission to. Just because you were _allowed_ to say something, didn't mean you _should_.

If the subject matter were not so serious, Anastasia might have laughed at her own thoughts. After all,_ she _was hardly one to talk about bridling the tongue or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Maybe the real reason Dimitri words cut so deep, got so horridly under her skin, was simply because she just didn't _want_ to believe them. She wanted her papa to be able to fix everything.

The way she'd always used to_ think_ he could.

* * *

Nicholas was _not _back for his daughter's birthday, much to Anastasia's disappointment.

In fact, there had been no news of him at all following the initial message that he was returning, and there had been reports of more riots in Saint Petersburg. The worry on everyone's mind -the one they didn't dare speak of- was that the poor tsar was trapped somewhere, these mad hoards blocking his path.

Still, Anastasia tried to be cheerful and keep everybody's spirits up. After all, even without Papa there to share it with them, it was a special occasion. And it seemed her siblings, Mama, and the servants had all gone to great lengths to make it nice for her. The least she could do was laugh and joke and tease them like nothing was wrong. They were counting on her, it seemed, to help them not to be so gloomy.

Olga and Tatiana had both made her ribbon bookmarks with little black cameos of the four of them, the Tsarina gave her a crystal egg to keep rings and bracelets in, and Gilliard presented her with a leather-bound French novel.

Alexei's gift was an almost five-foot-long scarf he'd knitted himself. It was pitifully ugly. Even Anastasia herself had to fight back a wince as she accepted it. She managed to hide her expression with a kiss she planted on his frail white cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I'll wear it next time we go out to play in the snow." Hopefully no one would see it tucked under her woolen coat and sable collar.

Maria's gift was last. Her hands were shaking as she handed a sleek velvet box to her sister.

Anastasia hadn't expected anything so fancy. Princesses though they were, all four of them had a limited allowance that Nicholas and Alexandra were very firm about. Which meant their birthday gifts to each other were more heartfelt than they were extravagant.

"What's this?" Anastasia asked.

"Open it and find out," Alexandra encouraged her.

Maria had a goofy grin forming on her face as Anastasia lifted the lid and the tiny silver hinges squeaked ever so slightly.

Within folds of lavender satin was the most elegant string of milky-white pearls imaginable.

Anastasia couldn't speak, her voice caught in her throat. All she could do was gaze down at the angelic beauty of the object in her hands. It was like holding a box that contained a series of miniature moons. They seemed almost to_ glow_ in their perfection.

"I've been saving up," Maria told her, blushing. "I've been buying one pearl at a time for years now. Mama's helped some. She paid for the box, since I spent the rest of my allowance on the pearls and sweets."

"Oh, Mashka!" Tears began to flood Anastasia's eyes as she flung herself into her sister's arms. "Oh!"

"You like it?"

"No, I _love_ it!" She knew then that it would become her second-favorite piece of jewelry, right after the necklace Grandmama had given her to wind up her music box with.

Maria eyes were streaming as Anastasia pulled away. But not with emotion. Her nose was runny, too. She coughed into the crock of her arm, shaking again.

"Are you all right?" Olga reached over and put her hand on Maria's shoulder.

"Fine," she said, her voice weak from coughing. "I think I might have a slight cold. I've had chills today."

Tatiana felt her forehead. "You're warm."

"I'm fine," Maria repeated, forcing a smile. "Really."

Alexandra looked concerned but said nothing.

"Aren't you going to try Mashka's pearls on?" Alexei asked, looking over at Anastasia.

She nodded and, lifting them out of the box, fastened the moony string around her neck.

Behind Alexei's wheelchair, Dimitri caught his breath, immediately feeling like an idiotka.

Anastasia wasn't even that pretty, really. Even growing much taller and thinner over the years, she still looked like a stumpy little girl compared to her sisters. With the exception of Maria, who was only a few inches taller and shared more facial features with her younger sister than she did with the big pair.

Yet, even so, sometimes Dimitri felt oddly attracted to the imperial family's household imp. Sometimes it was hard to remember that his little troublemaker he'd more or less grown up with was a grand duchess, so high above him in rank it was almost immeasurable. He had to remind himself, more often than he liked, that she was a princess and -companion to Alexei or not- he was only a kitchen boy.

He'd gotten her a present for her birthday, too, though. This was not considered improper. Many of the other servants gave presents to the girls from time to time, which the Tsar and Tsarina had taught them to accept with absolute graciousness.

It felt sort of strange to pull out a folded bolt of blue cloth and rough white lace from a sack while the grand duchess was stroking an expensive pearl necklace around her throat, but Dimitri cleared his throat and did so with as much dignity as he could muster up, choking back laughter at the irony, trying to look proud.

"I brought you a dress." He unfolded and shook out the blue dress, holding it up.

Anastasia burst into laughter. "You bought me a..." She took a step towards him. "...Tent."

Pooka, who'd been sniffing around at the girls' skirts, hoping for crumbs, looked up and barked.

_Great_, Dimitri thought, even the mutt's laughing at me.

Anastasia lifted the bottom of the dress and stuck her head under it. The coarse lace tickled the hairs on the back of her neck.

Dimitri glanced down at her through the hole the head went through. "What are you looking for?"

"The Russian circus," she said, rolling her eyes all around, searching. "I think it's still in here."

Tatiana laughed so hard her sides ached.

Maria whispered, "She says the Russian circus is in the dress!" to a giggling Olga.

Even Alexandra smiled, hiding it behind a gold-rimmed glass of water Lili brought to her. "Mashka, darling," she said, setting down the glass, composure regained, "why are you scratching yourself?"

* * *

There was still no word from Nicholas, which in itself was worrisome enough, and now Maria had fallen ill.

Her streaming eyes and shakes and scratching had all turned out to be symptoms of the measles. Suspected by Alexandra when, the morning after Anastasia's birthday, Maria had not been able to get out of bed, and then confirmed by Botkin, who shook his head and sighed.

It was a bad case, no doubt about it.

Olga and Tatiana had already had the measles when they were very small, but Anastasia hadn't, so naturally the first thing that was done was to separate the little pair, much to their distress.

And it was far worse for Anastasia than for Maria, who had the luxury of delirium to distract her from the absence of her favorite sister and best friend. Anastasia was simply left alone, moved to a strange wing of the palace she'd never bothered to go into before.

Worse still was that no one paid much attention to her after she was moved. They kept a sharp eye on her for a little while, since Botkin said that it might already be too late to prevent her from catching Maria's measles, as she had hugged her while already infected, but as soon as they were fairly certain she was healthy enough, the concern all turned to Maria and Alexei.

Alexei did not have the measles, but he did have a bad cough that everybody feared would get worse. Tatiana and Alexandra rarely left his side, while Olga and Botkin kept their never-ending vigil over Maria.

The tide shifted suddenly as one morning Alexei's cough was much better and Maria developed pneumonia as a complication. Tatiana and the Tsarina joined Olga and Botkin at the side of the second-youngest grand duchess. Prayers were said, tears fell in buckets, and Anastasia, who wanted to be with Maria most of all, especially as it seemed she might...might..._die_... Well, it was not permitted. They would not have _her_ falling sick, too.

Though, in all honesty, if anything happened to Maria, Anastasia wasn't sure she didn't want to die right along with her. What was a life without her beloved Mashka? Without the sister she'd shared a room with her whole life.

She tried to be brave, to be as good and piteous as her mother. Maybe, if she could manage it, God would hear their prayers and save Maria. But she could never quite mean her prayers as whole-heartedly as she wanted to. Deep down, she was too angry at God for letting her sister get sick in the first place. And, of course, she knew it wouldn't be right to say_ If you take Maria, I'll never forgive you_, in a prayer. Her mama would have been appalled. Perhaps rightly so.

At any rate, it seemed better to apply the old adage that if you had nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all.

So, until Maria showed signs of getting better, Anastasia kept her prayers short and curt, willing herself not to yell at any high-power cruel enough to make someone as sweet as Mashka suffer and someone as good as Papa impossible to reach.

She had just finished muttering one such forced prayer and was lifting her knees off the strange carpet and crawling into the big, empty canopy bed -homesick for her cot and Maria's snoring in the one right beside it- when Pooka came over wagging his tail.

"Here boy." Anastasia leaned over and clapped her hands.

Pooka jumped and was lifted up onto the bed beside the grand duchess.

"What's that?" It was only then that she noticed Pooka had a pearl necklace in his mouth -the one Maria had given her for her birthday.

She had no idea how the dog had gotten ahold of those pearls, but her eyes misted over at the memory they brought back. It was only of a few days ago, but, _oh_, it _felt_ so much longer!

Pooka dropped the necklace at her feet, lowered his little gray body, barked twice, and wagged his tail again.

Bending over, Anastasia picked up the pearls and set them down on the pillow beside her.

It was only then -looking at the little necklace on the little pillow- that the tears began to stream, rolling down her face freely as she sobbed. It mattered not one bit to her that she was eighteen now and far too old to cry like this.

For, once she started, she couldn't stop. Even if she _had_ wanted to, it would have been impossible.

She pulled her knees to her chest and carried on, heaving snotty, rapid breaths, salty rain falling like a storm on her cheeks until she fell asleep and woke at morning's first light dry-eyed, feeling numb.

* * *

Still numb, Anastasia sat by a bay window, overlooking a frozen imperial garden. One of the smaller ones.

Maria would have said the trees and railings and empty flowerbeds blanketed in packed snow looked like cakes and candies covered with hardened sugar icing.

Anastasia's mind regarded this fact almost coldly, her blank face not showing even the smallest signs of sadness or amusement. She played pointlessly with Grandmama's_ Together in Paris_ necklace, lifting the gold chain slightly and letting the pendant swing back and forth.

_Back and forth... Back and forth... Back and forth... Back and forth..._

"Stop fiddling with that thing," said a voice from behind her.

She jumped, startled. Then, recognizing the person, wrinkled her nose and looked petulant. "Oh, it's you."

Dimitri rolled his eyes. He'd come over here because he was worried about her, because she looked so empty... And yet, somehow, he'd managed to get annoyed with her, with the way she'd been playing with that necklace and slumping in the window seat.

Naturally, none of his pity came through in his voice. Just the annoyance.

"Sorry," he said at last. "I was just trying to help."

A fire had been lit under her, melting away some of the numbness. Apparently annoyance was as easy to pass on as the measles.

"Dimitri?" she simpered.

"Yes?"

"Do you have amnesia?"

He looked confused. "Um, no."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"You're sure? _Absolutely_ sure?"

"Yeah..." His brows furrowed, coming close together.

"So you remember who I am?" She raised her own eyebrows.

"_Yes_..." Where was she going with this?

"You remember that I'm the daughter of the Tsar of Russia?"

How could he ever forget _that_? "Of course!"

"Then stop bossing me around!" She folded her arms across her chest and turned away from him in a huff, looking back out the window at the swirling snowflakes.

That was when Dimitri noticed the dress she was wearing. It seemed to be in a very familiar shade of blue... "Hey, isn't that...?" He gestured down at the dress with his chin.

She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye. "Yes, thank you."

His forehead crinkled "What _happened _to it?"

The dress he'd given her had had ruffles at the bottom and longer sleeves. It had also had a ruffled collar. This dress, though resembling that dress in almost all other ways, had none of these distinctive features.

Anastasia shrugged. "I fixed it up a bit." She looked down at her waist where a belt was fastened. "It was too big."

"I guess I should just be glad you didn't turn it into a_ hat_," Dimitri murmured.

She stuck out her tongue at him.

He laughed. "Okay, sorry. It's...it's really beautiful, actually."

"You think so?" Her voice was softer now, less defensive.

"Yes," he admitted. "I mean, it was nice on the hanger, but it looks even better on you." Oh, dear _God_, what nonsense was he spewing and why couldn't he make himself _stop_? "You...you should wear it." Wait, _what_?

She arched a brow at him. "I _am_ wearing it."

Dimitri scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "Yeah...uh...right..."

"Your highness!" Gilliard came running up to them, followed by the Tsarina, both looking pale as ghosts and horror-stricken.

"Oh, thank _God_," Dimitri muttered under his breath, grateful for any interruption, no matter how dismal-looking the interrupters.

"Anastasia!" cried the Tsarina. "Come here, darling." She held out her hands.

Anastasia got up. "Mama?"

Alexandra fast-walked over and grasped her daughter's hands in her own. "We've just gotten word..."

"From...from..." Anastasia stammered. "From _Papa_?"

"Yes." The Tsarina blinked back tears.

"Is he okay?"

Alexandra nodded. "He is safe. But something else has happened. Something terrible."

"What is it?" Anastasia felt herself trembling already.

"Your father has given up the Russian throne. Or rather, he has been _forced _to."

"I don't understand, Mama, what does it mean?"

Alexandra reached up and stroked her daughter's hair, tucking a lock behind one ear. "It means, dear one, that we... That we are not the imperial family any longer. And...and the new government is...is..."

"_Yes_, Mama?" Anastasia prompted.

"Is putting us and any servants who choose to remain here at the palace under house arrest."

Gilliard blew his nose and crossed himself.

Dimitri blurted, "_What_?"

But Alexandra was through answering questions; she was now holding her daughter close, embracing her second-youngest child tightly, as if she was afraid the new government would come in and yank them apart any second.

* * *

Maria couldn't understand what was happening. Even in her fevers and delirium, though, she sensed change. She heard more guards outside her room. Tatiana's pretty face was blotchy, like she'd been crying. For once she looked less than perfect, which Anastasia would have said was a world-changing event in itself. Not to mention, Mama hadn't come back since she'd gotten that letter about (or was it _from_?) Papa.

Everything was so muddled. If only somebody could come in and explain what was _happening_...

Oh, why were the patterns on the crown-molding moving again? It made her so nervous when they did that. She was afraid the whole thing would break off and fall on her head and crush her.

What a horrible, horrible way to go.

Short of a firing squad, which would be terrifying, _was_ there a worse way to die than being crushed or smothered? Trapped under heavy plaster with no hope of escape?

Maria certainly didn't believe so.

* * *

It had really been several _hours_, but it felt like five dizzy minutes to their poor confused Mashka, when Tatiana and Olga came in and attempted to answer Maria's unspoken questions.

But it was all for nothing. She couldn't understand a word. She was stuffed up and her ears were completely plugged. Botkin had warned the girls Maria might have an abscess or two assisting the blocking, making it hard for sound to get through.

Yet, since she'd moaned that she could hear the new guards (which were indeed there and not a figment of feverish imagination like the possessed crown-molding) they'd thought maybe she _could_ hear well enough for them to explain.

Apparently not, it would seem.

"What do we do now?" Olga asked Tatiana.

Tatiana shook her head. "I don't know."

Dimitri walked in, carrying some flowers Alexei had wanted send to cheer Maria up. They'd had to be searched by those stupid guards outside the room, and Dimitri had relished the sneezing fit the scent caused one of them, smirking as they finally allowed him to pass.

"Such nice flowers," Tatiana said, trying to be kind but sounding more patronizing.

"Thank you," he replied. "Alexei would have sent Derevenko, but he hasn't had the measles yet, so he's still in quarantine." Dimitri didn't mention that he strongly suspected Derevenko was _lying_, just so Alexei couldn't send him in and out of Maria's room with various get well gifts.

"It's no use," sighed Olga, reaching down and stroking Maria's hair. "We just can't make her understand what's happened."

"I could try," Dimitri offered.

"You?" said Tatiana, sounding surprised.

He nodded. "Here." He walked over to Maria's bedside and put his hand in his pocket, strolling the way the Tsar did when he was out for a casual walk in the garden.

Dimitri wasn't Anastasia's equal at mimicry, but it was close enough that both Olga and Tatiana smiled, and Maria -recognizing the subject of the pantomime- croaked, "_Papa_?"

Next, Dimitri pouted to the top of his head and mouthed, "_Crown_."

Maria blinked. _Crown...Papa...crown... _Papa's crown? What happened to Papa's crown? Was it stolen? Was that why there were extra guards? Why was that making Tatiana cry? It wasn't like Papa ever wore the crown except on special occasions. Surely it would be found and returned before it was time for another formal portrait.

"I think she's getting it," Olga whispered to Tatiana.

Next, Dimitri made a slashing motion across his throat, trying to show that Nicholas wasn't Tsar anymore.

But all Maria got from it was...

"_Dead_?" she shout-croaked. "Papa's _dead_?" Papa was dead and his crown had been stolen! Somebody killed Papa to take his crown! Maybe it was one of those angry bread-stealing peasants she'd been hearing so much about before she got sick. And to think she'd felt so _sorry _for them!

"You were _saying_?" Tatiana whispered back to Olga.

Dimitri shook his head, trying to fix this. "No, he-"

It was too late; Maria was already bawling, tears streaming down her face, coughing and sobbing and wheezing all at once.

Tatiana shot Dimitri a frustrated look. "Thank you for that," she growled sarcastically.

Olga put her arm around Maria's shoulder, sitting on the edge of the bed, trying -and failing- to explain that Papa wasn't dead, he just wasn't in charge of Russia anymore.

Leaving the room in shame, Dimitri couldn't shake the odd, unexplainable feeling that a large part of him wanted to sit next to Maria and cry endlessly right along with her.

**AN: Please Review.**


	4. Hair Loss & Loyalty

**AN: A brief note to those unfamiliar with Russian names. Many Russians have a patronymic, a name following the first name; this is_ sort_ of like a middle name, except that it literally means "Son or daughter of (whomever)" and all children in a family would share this. It is also gender-specific. For example, Anastasia's is Nicholaevna (daughter of Nicholas) and her brother Alexei's would have been Nicholaevich (son of Nicholas). **

**Since Dimitri does not have a patronymic in the Don Bluth film canon, I've had to invent one for him in this AU. **

_Hair Loss & Loyalty_

After Maria slowly recovered from the measles and pneumonia, life began to grow as stale as the now uncirculated air in the palace.

Nicholas had returned home, greeted with a great many hugs and kisses from his daughters and wife, and a misty-eyed salute from his son (who then also allowed himself to be pulled into a hug). But, aside from a few loyal servants who would even go so far as to consider themselves the former tsar's friends, no one else seemed pleased -or even to _care_, one way or the other- that he'd come back.

A great many cold-eyed servants were busily packing their things, allowing themselves to be escorted out by guards, knowing full-well they would not be permitted back within these walls. Not ever.

This, though, was a sacrifice they were willing to make. They were in no way prepared to become prisoners alongside the old imperial family.

"Are you not going as well?" Olga asked Dimitri, having noticed he hadn't shown any signs of altering his routine of chores and keeping Alexei company aside from begrudgingly complying with whatever changes the guards made.

"No, I think I'll stick around." Dimitri shrugged. He seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, considering that, viewed even at it's simplest, the choice to stay was a monumentally life-impacting one. "There's no place else I have to be."

Speaking with unexpected (yet somehow still appropriately distant) warmth, Olga replied, "You're a good man, Dimitri Viktoeivch," and slipped out of the room on her way to check on Alexandra.

The former tsarina was lying in bed with a headache. Tatiana was already with her, but she'd been reading to their poor mama (whose room was always rather poorly lit, because bright lights made her head hurt worse) for several hours now, so she was likely growing tired.

For a while after this surprising comment, Dimitri kept reminding himself to ask Olga how she knew his late father's name was Viktor. He'd never told any of the imperial children that; not even Cook knew his parents' names.

But, thanks to the revolution and other distractions, he would keep forgetting to ask her, and the day would come -much too soon- when it would be too late.

In short, he was never to get his answer.

However, it is entirely possible that Nicholas found out (it's not hard to learn such things when you're the Tsar of all Russia) and at some point, for whatever reason, disclosed this information to his eldest daughter.

Maria, who was nearby, knitting what looked like a sock (except that she had turned the heel twice by mistake), suddenly flung her needles down and gave Dimitri a moist-eyed glare. "There's no reason for you to act like we _need _you here! You should just go like everyone else. Don't pretend like you don't hate us, too! We don't _want _your pity!"

With that, she fled the room.

Dimitri gaped in shock for a moment at the space where she'd been standing. This wasn't like her. This wasn't the same girl who'd thrown a chocolate to him a little over a decade ago when he'd haphazardly stumbled across Alexei's secret.

Anastasia had been rolling a ball for Pooka to chase after at the top of the staircase. She took in her sister's outburst with surprise too. Maria hadn't said much since she'd recovered; this was the most she'd spoken in what felt like forever. It was like she was possessed. Not once in her entire life could Anastasia recall dear Mashka so much as raising her voice at a servant, let alone blowing up at one.

She followed her sister, Pooka -the ball in his mouth- following. Alexei followed too, ordering Dimitri to wheel him after his sisters. He was well enough currently to walk (though very slowly and with an obvious limp), but whenever he needed to be somewhere quickly, he still used the chair -and Dimitri to push it for him.

Maria was curled up under a painting of Ivan the Terrible, back against the wall and knees to her chest, when Anastasia and Pooka reached her.

Pooka dropped the ball near Maria and let out a low whimper.

She ignored him, buried her face deeper and sobbed.

"Mashka, what's wrong?" Anastasia's hand was on her trembling shoulder.

Maria looked up, her big blue eyes so wide and hollow they looked like empty tea saucers, sniffling. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed yet."

"Noticed what?"

Swallowing hard, Maria reached up and raked her fingers through her hair. When she pulled her hand back, thick auburn clumps remained in her palm.

"Oh, _Mashka_!"

"I'm losing _all _of it," she wept bitterly. "Botkin says this happens sometimes, after the measles. I'm going to be bald and ugly. And no one will ever love me."

"That's not true," Anastasia said firmly. "_We_ love you. And it doesn't matter about your hair, not even a little bit. It's going to grow back."

"You can say that because nothing's wrong with _your_ hair."

"Wait right here!" Anastasia ran out of the room.

"What's she doing?" Dimitri whispered to Alexei.

Alexei shrugged. "I have no idea." He looked over his shoulder and called, "_Ana_?"

A few moments later, she returned, carrying a pair of scissors. Taking a deep breath, she lifted up her own long red hair and began hacking all off, piece by piece, curls falling in careless clumps to the floor.

When she finished, her hair a short, wild mess, Anastasia dropped the scissors to the floor. "Okay, how about _now_?"

Maria just blinked at her in horror. "Mama will-"

"Oh, she'll be _appalled_," Anastasia sighed. "Like she always is. I didn't do it for her. I did it for _you_. There's nothing for you to be sad over, because now we've _both _lost our hair."

Alexei pulled himself up out of his wheelchair and limped over to his sisters, putting his hand in Anastasia's, letting their fingers interlock as if they were small children crossing a street together.

"Dimitri," he ordered, "go get a razor. I'm going to shave my hair off, too."

"Oh, Alyosha, no!" Maria staggered awkwardly to her feet. "You _can't_. Mama will be more upset about your hair than Anastasia's. Besides, it's such a pretty color."

Alexei rolled his eyes. "Don't be silly, Marie."

"But-" she tried.

He held up a hand and went on. "Of_ course_ I'm going to shave it off. You'll have to shave off yours anyway, or else you'll be shedding everywhere and it will grow back in funny -or worse, not at all." Sighing gently, Alexei arched a brow at a small bald patch on his sister's head. "So we're going to be bald together. You and me. Bald as babies. I'll finally match my nickname perfectly. And with Ana's hair as short as a boy's, we'll make such a funny group, the three of us. We'll be so jolly with laughter and inside jokes, we won't even mind how horrid we all look. And, by the time we care again, our hair will be back."

"Mama-"

"Mama won't mind once we make her laugh and come to see it in a positive light," Alexei said cheerfully. "Papa can help with that." He noticed Dimitri was still in the room with them. "What? You're still here? Go on, then! Get that razor. Even with my limp I could have gotten it and been back by now."

"Do it, Dimitri," Maria said softly, giving in. "It will be all right."

So Dimitri got the razor and helped Alexei shave his head. He was afraid the entire time of giving him a nick and making him bleed, no matter how often the former tsarevich reminded his companion that small cuts (though they bled more than for average people) were not really so life-threatening to a hemophiliac as was the common belief. As long as Dimitri didn't grasp his head and smash it against something, Alexei pointed out, this was highly unlikely to end in a fatality.

In the end it was managed, and Alexei seemed pleased, examining his hairless reflection in a small hand-mirror with an amused nod.

Dimitri then made a choice of his own. After helping Anastasia even out her new boy-cut, he put the scissors down, picked up the razor he had used on Alexei, and -glancing at Maria, whose facial expression was more befitting her old self now- began to shave off his own hair.

Alexei clapped, Anastasia laughed, chortling in a very unlady-like manner, and Maria put her hand to her mouth. She had not expected a servant -regardless of his decade of friendship with them- to make such a sacrifice for her.

In a way, Maria almost saw this as a stronger display of loyalty than his decision to stay under house arrest with them.

* * *

"Something is wrong," Tatiana said, examining her camera. "The shutter is stuck."

Dimitri looked up from his chess game with Alexei; Anastasia and Maria stopped writing in their diaries and glanced over at their second-eldest sister. Because Dimitri, Alexei, and Anastasia wore hats, no one knew about their hair yet. A few short stray wisps of Anastasia's hair stuck out, framing her face, making it look as if the rest if it might simply be tucked up under the hat. Maria wore a cloth turban, but Tatiana had already guessed about _her_ hair. She studied some nursing, so it was not as much a shock to her as it was to Anastasia.

"Don't look at _me_, your highness," said Lili, licking the end of a length of scarlet thread and looping it through a needle. "I don't know anything about cameras or taking pictures."

"Here." Dimitri stood and walked over to her. "Let me see."

Tatiana's forehead crinkled. "Do you _know _anything about cameras, Dimitri?"

He didn't, really, but he wasn't about to admit that. Besides, if it was just that one button jammed, he thought it might not require extensive knowledge to get it to pop back out again. "Sure, why not?"

The second eldest grand duchess arched an eyebrow, not looking even remotely convinced. Still, she handed the camera over to him.

It took a few seconds, one wasted photograph as the flash went off, taking a picture of his boots, and -knowing film was probably very expensive- a rough but nearly inaudible cuss, but Dimitri got the shutter fixed in the end, handing it back to Tatiana.

Suddenly Anastasia jumped up, slamming her diary shut. "Take a picture of _me_, Tatya!" With this, she ripped off her hat and posed dramatically.

"Me too!" cried Alexei, following suit and ripping off his own hat.

Lili -who had chosen to brave house arrest, who had not seen dark spots and felt weak, close to fainting, when the tsar abdicated- swayed and nearly blacked out now at the sight of Anastasia's hair and Alexei's lack of it.

A guard, obviously trying not to laugh, had to reach out and steady her.

Dimitri sighed and took off his hat.

Tatiana, slowly realizing what this all meant, smiled. "Mama will have a fit."

Anastasia stuck out her tongue.

"_Imp_," she muttered, but raised the camera to snap a photograph all the same. "All of you." Tatiana motioned for Dimitri to go stand next to them and for Maria to join as well, after removing her turban.

It was a moment Dimitri would often look back on and feel both happy and sad at once.

The four of them leaning in close together and making faces as Tatiana took the picture... With his shaved head, Dimitri looked like one of them. You couldn't see any real difference between him and Alexei, or even Maria, save for her softer features and curves.

It was the one moment in his life Dimitri could remember ever truly feeling like he was part of something beyond himself. Not just an attached servant but part of the Romanov family.

* * *

One thing that made no sense to Dimitri -irking him like a constant itch he couldn't scratch- was the continued presence of Derevenko.

The handful of servants that had stayed on consisted of persons who had nowhere else to go or who had grown attached to the former imperial family -not for their status, but as _people_- and couldn't bear to leave them.

Derevenko was neither.

Certainly he had no fondness for Alexei. The only look Dimitri had seen him give the boy since his father abdicated was a slow, cold smirk.

At first he'd wondered if maybe Derevenko really _was_ keeping himself in quarantine to avoid catching the measles (some breakouts had been reported outside the palace as well, none of them as carefully contained as Maria's illness). Such being the case, he would surely leave after Maria fully recovered and Botkin assured everybody it was safe to go about freely once again.

Yet, Maria had gotten better, lost her hair, even had some of it start to grow back like a small blanket of red-brown fuzz, and Derevenko stayed on.

What _is_ his game? Dimitri thought furiously. If only it was possible to stay one step ahead of the rat...

But even knowing Derevenko was up to something didn't cushion the horrible blow on the day Dimitri walked into Alexei's room only to see the former tsarevich being ordered about like a common coal-boy.

"No excuses, young Citizen Romanov, you're just like any other Russian child now, no one special, and you _will_ go down to the library and carry my letter for Gibbs," Derevenko was saying haughtily as Dimitri slunk unnoticed through the doorway and stationed himself near the window. "I have_ seen_ you walk, Alexei. I don't care how long it takes you, or how slow you need to go, but I will insist you run this errand for me, or I will not assist you back into your wheelchair the next time you topple out of it."

"The next time you knock me out of it, you mean."

So Alexei _had_ grown somewhat aware of Derevenko's disdain after all, then.

Dimitri shivered involuntarily. How could this boy, who spoke so darkly, so above his years in tone and meaning, be the same childish fifteen-year-old who shaved his head just to cheer up his sister? Yet it only made him respect Alexei more, seeing what he was becoming -even without the prospect of being tsar one day- and want so badly to pants Derevenko and pitch him into a freezing fountain. To see him humiliated -shaking from cold and rage, lips turning various alternating hues of dark blue and purple- as he was humiliating Alexei.

_Why don't you tell your papa?_ Dimitri knew, in his place, raised as Alexei was raised, he wouldn't stand for this insult. He'd snitch in a heartbeat. Go running straight to Nicholas. And yet not one word had Alexei spoken in Dimitri's hearing against Derevenko. Not even to Anastasia, who he told practically _everything_ to!

Alexei limped off, clutching the letter he was to deliver, wincing as if each step was a lever pushing broken glass down into his swollen joints.

Derevenko still hadn't noticed Dimitri. Grinning wickedly, he stuffed some silverware from a breakfast tray on Alexei's bed into his coat pockets.

So that was it! He was planning to steal as much wealth as he could before he left them. He wasn't going to leave the Romanovs' empty-handed.

Worse than a rat, he was a pig. A greedy, selfish, horrible _pig_!

And he didn't stop at silverware either. Looking back over his shoulder, Dimitri saw him stuff something gold and green into his pocket, the ornate little object clanking and chafing shamelessly against the stolen spoons and knives.

It was, of course, Anastasia's music box. Alexei had asked her, the night before when he couldn't sleep, to loan it to him, and she had, winding it up so its lullaby would calm him and then leaving, taking the necklace with her. Derevenko had no way of opening it without the necklace, but he didn't care; the perfectly carved gold alone would make it worth selling on the black market, even if it _was_ impossible to wind up.

Petty thievery was one thing, but stealing the music box -the one thing Anastasia loved more than all her other possessions put together- was a step too far.

While not agreeing, and still wanting to hit Derevenko, Dimitri could see the practical side of taking some silver. He knew his own morals weren't perfect, sometimes even thinking that, in another life, he might have become a thief or conman. But that didn't justify this kind of spite to him.

It wasn't only the money. It couldn't have been for somebody like Derevenko. He was trying to hurt them by striking close to the heart of the former imperial family. Particularly the children whose command he had bristled under for so many years.

Their pride, their favorite belongings...

Well, Dimitri wasn't going to stand for it! "Put it back."

Derevenko whirled around. "Put what back, kitchen boy?"

"Don't be stupid," Dimitri told him. "You know what you took."

"You mean this spoon?" He pulled Alexei's silver spoon from his pocket. "Don't be such a fool. Do you really think the guards haven't been helping themselves to silverware for nearly two weeks now? I only want my fair share."

"Keep the silver," Dimitri snapped. "If you can take that and look at yourself in the mirror, why should I care? But you're_ not _taking Anastasia's music box."

Derevenko tried to brush past him. "You didn't see anything, not if you know what's good for you."

"Is that a_ threat_?" scoffed Dimitri, planting himself more firmly in front of Derevenko. "It's pretty pathetic."

"_Get_ out of my way," Derevenko hissed through clenched teeth.

Dimitri rolled his eyes. "Am I supposed to be scared of_ you_? Some posh little sailor nanny?"

Growling, Derevenko reached out and shoved Dimitri into the wall behind him. "What's the matter?" he taunted as Dimitri struggled to his feet, back throbbing. "Did this little sailor nanny push too hard?"

"I'm going to tell the tsa... I mean, Nicholas," Dimitri panted. "I'm going to tell him what you've been doing. Treating Alexei like your own personal valet, stealing... He might not have power over the Russian people anymore, but he still has enough personal influence to have you sacked."

"Oh yeah?" Derevenko grabbed him by the shirt and elbowed him in the gut. "Well, you can tell bloody Nicholas that German bitch of his anything you want, kitchen boy."

Dimitri bent over involuntarily from the pain shooting through his stomach. "_Why_, Derevenko?" he groaned. "Why are you doing this? Alexei _cared _about you! They all did. Why do you hate them so much?"

"Alexei cared about me?" he laughed bitterly. "Oh, that's _rich_! Do you know what he used to call me because I didn't run fast enough to suit him? Because I wasn't as slim or quick as the half-starved urchin you were? Fatty.

"They had their prissy little English cousins here once. Alexei took great pleasure in telling them to 'watch Fatty run', making jokes about how my backside jiggled. And Anastasia? You know why Alexei loves her so much? Because she's as much a monster as he is. Maybe more. She once set up a bucket of water to fall on my head. The _water_ missed me. The bucket, however, gave me a concussion and a lump on the head that made me wake in the middle of the night vomiting. Still, every day I had to be up and at it to entertain their oh so precious Alexei, who was so sick.

"All we are to the Romanovs are instruments for their amusement. Useful as long as we entertain them. It's time they learned how it feels to be nothing, to be forced to do things they don't want to."

"Whatever their problem is," grunted Dimitri, "at least the Romanovs don't hold grudges over a few careless words and rough pranks pulled by _children_." Anastasia and Alexei weren't saints in their childhood, so what? _Derevenko_ was the monster here, not the two youngest Romanovs.

"What does a boot-licker like you understand about pride? You'd clean Alexei's feet with your tongue if he ordered you to." Derevenko snorted condescendingly. "Sooner or later you're going to have to accept that your little idols are no better than anyone else now. Nicholas is just a weak man who couldn't lead three men into a dinning hall, let alone an army. His children don't have the right to order the likes of you and me around anymore. It's kinder not to keep deluding them."

"Alexei Romanov is a better man than you'll ever be, Derevenko, and he's still just a kid, really." Dimitri arched a brow challengingly. "Was it 'kinder' of me to break your delusion?"

Angry, Derevenko spun around and grabbed Alexei's toy rifle from its place leaning against the bedpost, thrusting the butt forcefully into Dimitri's face.

A few years ago, when he was younger and smaller, the blow might have knocked Dimitri to the ground. As it was, a loud _crunch_ing sound told him his nose was broken even _before_ the stream of blood started pouring out of it.

Whatever Derevenko intended to do next was interrupted by a young woman's yelp of sickly surprise and a dog's defensive bark in the doorway.

Anastasia, carrying Pooka, had been on her way into her brother's room, arriving just in time to see Dimitri jabbed in the nose with the miniature rifle. She'd overheard none of the conversation before this, but she didn't like the look on Derevenko's face right then (and it hadn't escaped her notice how bossy the man had become with Alexei since they'd been put under house arrest), so she took Dimitri's side immediately. He was _clearly_ the victim here, anyway.

"Hey!" she shouted, her blue eyes darkening and narrowing. "What do you think you're doing? Don't hit him!"

Pooka lept from her arms, growing threateningly at Derevenko.

"Keep your dog away from me!"

"Don't tell me what to do with my own dog!" Anastasia planted her hands on her hips. "Now what exactly is going on in here?"

Before Derevenko had a chance to answer, Pooka sprung at him. The dog latched onto Derevenko's coat pocket with his teeth, like he was trying to get at something inside.

Dimitri, lowering his blood-stained palm from his nose, realized that it was the same pocket he'd seen Derevenko skip the music box into. Somehow, Pooka must have figured out what he was up to. Good old mutt...

But Derevenko wasn't having any of this. He was furiously spinning, trying to shake Pooka off. And, when that didn't work, he started trying to strike the dog with the butt of the toy he still clutched.

"What's _wrong_ with you?" screeched Anastasia, charging Derevenko like a mad bull. "Don't you dare hurt my dog! Don't you _dare_!" She grasped the toy rifle, trying to yank it away from him.

Derevenko started trying to shake_ her_ off, too, like she was of no more consequence than her dog.

Pooka finally started to peel away from Derevenko's coat, but half the pocket came with him, the music box tumbling out into the floor.

Anastasia gasped. How _could _he? Derevenko had been with her family for so many years... He'd been with them even longer than _Dimitri_! He knew as well as anyone how much that music box meant to her. How could he try and steal it like this? Had he no conscience?

* * *

"I tell you what, Master," said Bartok, climbing out of Alexei's breast pocket up to his shoulder, where he perched like a tamed eagle. "I don't like the way this guy's been ordering you around. It shows he has no interest in your health."

"It's all right, really," Alexei replied, a little sadly. "I just don't understand why..." His voice trailed off. "It's just, in spite of everything, I thought we were friends. If even Derevenko's only been waiting for a chance to get back at me, who's really on our side? It's not _me_ I'm scared for, Bartok, it's my family. Especially Ana. Now that there's no more old Russia, I don't matter so much, and deep down I think I've always known I won't live to grow up-" He clearly had more to add, but he paused for a moment, lost deep in thought.

"Don't be so gloomy, Master," Bartok tried, brushing his wing against the former Tsarevich's cheek. "It isn't true. You know my nephew Izzie? He's a fruit bat, but he was born with high blood pressure. Everyone just expected him to keel over one day, mid-mango. And, remember, he don't eat no meat. No blood, even. Still they expected him to croak. Anyway, believe it or not, he never did."

"Thanks, but... Well, like I said, it's not me I'm worried about. I'm not afraid of dying. I just feel sorry for the others." He sighed heavily. "Who's going to look after them? If Derevenko can have secretly hated me all this time, what if... I mean, who's next? What if even Dimitri's not really on our side? Part of me always thought, when something happened, I could ask him to look after Ana for me and he would. Now I'm not certain. I hate that."

"You're just being silly now, Master," snorted Bartok. "Dimitri _loves_ you. Can't you tell?"

Alexei turned his head, his nose almost bumping Bartok's, making the little bat jump back a step. "Really? You're sure?"

"Is this the face of a bat who would lie to you?" Bartok smiled innocently, turned to the side, and posed.

Alexei smiled back for a second, though the light in his eyes and the joy in his expression quickly waned.

"Come _on_," cheered Bartok, "for a minute there you had your old spark back."

"I'm glad I've still got _you_, anyway," he told the bat, nuzzling his face against him.

"Master, I'm gonna tell you something," he said, looking both ways and taking a deep breath. "Before Rasputin died, he told me he thought it was possible that if you lived to seventeen your body would heal itself. That you wouldn't be a hemophiliac anymore. That you'd somehow outgrow it."

"But Rasputin was a fraud."

"Even so, wouldn't it be great if he was right about that? About this one little thing?"

Alexei nodded.

"I mean, heck," Bartok went on, "that's only, what, not even two years off? So don't count yourself out just yet."

The sound of screaming and crashing came from down the hallway Alexei had just limped out of, back where his room (and Derevenko) was.

"Did you hear that?" Alexei asked, swallowing.

"_Did I hear it_?" exclaimed Bartok. "Master, I'm a_ bat_. There's nothing I _don't_ hear."

"That sounded like Ana." He turned, starting to limp in the opposite direction, pushing on the wall to make himself go faster against his fragile body's will. "Come on, we've got to go back."

"But, the letter..."

"Derevenko's letter will have to wait. That's my sister screaming."

A furious bark that sounded like Pooka came next and, startled, Bartok dived back into Alexei's pocket.

* * *

Anastasia was pushed against the wall, Alexei's toy rifle pressed horizontally across her neck.

"You listen here, you ugly little Romanov," Derevenko snarled. "Don't you _ever_ raise your bloody diamond-encrusted hand to strike me again! You're _nothing_ now. Do you understand? I could do anything I wanted to you right now and no one would save you."

"Wanna bet?" Dimitri tackled him from behind, forcing him to the floor.

After Anastasia had discovered Derevenko's theft, slowly recovering from shock, she'd raised her hand to slap him across the face, and he'd responded by using the rifle -as well as his extra weight and strength- against her.

Only Dimitri wasn't having that. Straddling Derevenko, he bent over like a jackknife and unceremoniously punched him in the face. "I'm going to kill you if you _ever _talk to her like that again."

Derevenko reached up and closed his hand around Dimitri's throat.

Seeing at once what he intended, Anastasia hollered, "_No_!" and kicked him as hard as she could, digging the toe of her shoe into his bruising flesh. All she could think of, for that horrible moment, was Dimitri turning blue and struggling for air... She had to help him; Derevenko might actually_ kill _him if she didn't!

Cursing, he let go of Dimitri and rolled over. He made a grab for Anastasia's lacy skirt, pulling her down beside him.

Automatically, she swatted at him, clawing like a wild animal.

In the ensuing scuffle, her skirt tore, a pathetically girlish shriek (a disgustingly high-pitched noise Anastasia had not even known she was capable of making) flew out of her throat without warning, and a gun shot unexpectedly went off -followed by the whiz of a speeding bullet- making a low hole in the wall above their heads.

They immediately froze and looked to the door.

A guard, his weapon raised, stood in the doorway, Alexei by his side. "What the hell is going on in here?"

Anastasia opened her mouth to speak, but at the sight of her brother's pale, horror-stricken face, began to sob instead. _Why_ was this _happening_ to them? Were they really such horrible people? What had they done to deserve this?

On his knees, Dimitri pulled her to him, letting her cry into his chest.

The guard looked at the torn lace in Derevenko's hand and the scratches on his face. Believing Derevenko had tried to rape the former tsar's youngest daughter, he fixed his rifle more firmly in his direction. "You will leave the palace immediately. I will personally escort you out. You have twenty minutes to pack."

Without another word, just one hard glance back at Dimitri, Derevenko rose up and allowed the armed guard to lead him back to his own quarters to gather his possessions.

That was to be the last time any of them would see the man who had once been a trusted servant of Alexei Romanov, the boy who should have been the next Tsar of Russia.


	5. Romanov Falling

**AN: I would like to address a very good point made in autumnrose2010's review. She points out that in real life Derevenko was a kindly doctor who was loyal to the Romanovs, and expressed surprise over his meanness in my story. Delighted that a reader of mine was paying such close attention to detail, I quickly explained to her in a reply that in fact there were TWO Derevenkos in the Romanovs' lives. The more famous one was the doctor she mentioned; the other, on whom I based the cruelty of the character in my story, was a servant of Alexei's who turned on him after his father was no longer the tsar. I took many liberties, of course, but I wish to make it clear to all my readers that I am not trying to misrepresent the good doctor. I've simply left THAT Derevenko out of this fic to avoid name confusion. **

_Romanov Falling_

The ballroom was one of the few places in the palace where the ever-increasing guards didn't follow her, Anastasia had come to realize.

Well, that, the lavatory, and (usually) the bedrooms. Everywhere else, you couldn't seem to get away from their sharp eyes.

Maria liked the company, always having gone weak in the knees for a gentleman in a uniform, anyway, but Anastasia wished they'd just get lost once in a while.

What exactly did they imagine the family would_ do_ if they left them alone for a few hours? Burn their own home down? Write some kind of scandalous letter and find a way to send it out?

True, a few of the guards_ did_ seem genuinely concerned for their safety -especially after their misconception of the Derevenko incident Anastasia had never bothered to correct, so angry with him she almost _wanted _people to think the worst- but mostly they just behaved like complete pests.

She wasn't sure what it was about the ballroom that kept them out. Was it the lavishness? Even under a layer of dust that hadn't been cleared since her papa's abdication, crystal still winked off the chandeliers in the murky morning light. Maybe it had more to do with the fact that there was an echo, and -as long as they were standing outside- they'd hear anything they truly needed to. A scream, a fight, anything of importance, really, would carry...

Whatever the reason, Anastasia was glad of it. Sometimes she liked nothing better than to slip away and sit on the steps in front of that old royal portrait that had been painted back when she was seven or eight, looking out at the empty room, remembering.

More often than she ought to have, she 'borrowed' a few of her papa's cigarettes -smuggling them into the ballroom- and had herself a couple good smokes.

This was where Dimitri found her, thinking herself quite alone, puffing away.

He'd entered by way of a side balcony, and so had already seen what she was doing, but she -unaware of this- tried frantically to put out the cigarette and hide the smoldering remains behind her back.

"Hello, Dimitri," she said, a little stiffly, standing slowly and trying to turn her back away from him.

He smirked and began moving so that, whichever way she turned, he was still facing exactly what she didn't want him to see.

Basically, he made it impossible to keep her little secret with him orbiting around her like that.

"Hey...wha..." she spluttered out, irritated. "Why are you circling me? What, were you a vulture in another life?"

"Taking up smoking a little young, are we, your highness?" Still grinning teasingly at her, he raised his eyebrows.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Anastasia took her hand out from behind her back, showing the pitiful remains of her cigarette. "Don't tell Tatiana, okay? I'll never hear the end of it."

He chuckled. "My lips..." Here he stopped and made a zipping motion across his mouth. "...are sealed."

"Good." She sat down again.

"Actually, we had the same idea." Dimitri reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a pack.

"For your information," Anastasia told him, raking her fingers through her short red hair, "I've been smoking since I was twelve. Papa has this idea that the odd one can help break up chest congestion and calm the nerves. He used to give them to me more often than I had to sneak one, before this stupid war made us ration everything. Maria and Olga smoke, too. But you know how Governess is. She'd tell Mama, and I _know_ she'd disapprove because it doesn't look..." She wrinkled her nose and did air quotes on the next two words, "..._Lady-like_."

Dimitri snickered at that.

"When did _you_ start?"

He thought for a moment. "Three years ago? I stole some of Derevenko's at Livadia."

Anastasia pulled her knees to her chest and looked up at him, a slight pout forming on her lips. "That was my last one."

"Oh." Dimitri lowered himself down beside her and held out the pack. "Here. Help yourself."

"You're a saint." Anastasia reached in and slid one out.

Pulling a lighter out of the same pocket he'd retrieved the pack from, he lit it for her, then lit his own. He leaned back on the step, taking a long drag.

Anastasia exhaled a puff of smoke and scooted closer to him. "I can't remember the last time those chandeliers were on."

His eyes followed hers up to the ceiling. "It's been a while."

"Did you know next year was supposed to be my coming out ball?"

"Coming out of _what_, exactly?"

"Into society." Anastasia exhaled sharply through her nose, puffs of smoke curling out of the corners of her mouth and nostrils.

"You would have hated it," Dimitri said. They would have expected her to be prim and proper; the Anastasia he'd come to know over the last ten years was wholly incapable of being such. Unless, of course, she was in the process of mimicking someone who really _was_ all things courtly...

"Probably," she agreed, lifting her fingers to her mouth and taking the cigarette out. "It's not really that I_ want _to be a high society lady, I just hate being told I _can't _now." Her gaze shifted to a rat trap in the middle of the floor. "And I miss dancing. I'd give almost anything for just one last dance down there."

Stubbing out his cigarette, he reached for Anastasia's hand, pulling her up. "Come on."

"Why?"

"Trust me." Dimitri took her cigarette away and stubbed it out, too, then led her down the steps into the heart of the ballroom.

"How can there be so many memories in this one spot?" Anastasia mused softly, taking it all in, remembering how it felt to be hoisted up and spun around. _Oh, Papa!_ How it felt to be totally and completely happy, in a world that actually made _sense_. Nothing like the chaos her life had turned into as of late.

"Anastasia Nicholaevna," Dimitri said grandly, bowing for added affect. "May I have this dance?"

She smiled and allowed herself to be pulled into his arms.

They began to go through a few steps, but Dimitri suddenly stopped and looked at her with a bemused expression. "Why are you leading?"

Anastasia blushed. "Sorry."

It was probably the fact that he was a servant and she knew him largely as the playmate of her brother that made her take charge like that. She wasn't dancing with him as she would an officer, or even the former tsar, she was dancing with him as she would a childish companion.

Or perhaps it was not that at all; perhaps it was just the fact that, when she danced with her sisters or Alexei, she always led. Her siblings never grudged her that. And it _had_ been a while since she'd danced properly with anyone else.

"All right," Dimitri tried again, counting in his head (he wasn't exactly the best dancer). "Let's start over."

This time Anastasia let him take the lead, dictating her steps and movements, spinning her around.

Her eyes closed as she spun in and out of his grasp, and something strange happened to her. It was as if the room was lit up again, as if every chandelier was emitting its winking yellow light, rainbows reflecting off the crystals. And there were people, fading into the background, like at a grand ball. And though no music played, Anastasia could hear the rhythm of a tune. She could hear a balalaika and violins...feel the deep base of a cello...

It was...it was... It was rippling through her; tearing her down and building her back up again.

There was something horrible and wonderful about it at the same time.

Someone who felt what she was feeling now, as her eyes opened and locked with Dimitri's, could not be a shvibzik. Imps didn't have butterflies in their stomachs or the desire to feel another person's lips on their own. Everybody knew that.

And if she wasn't her family's little _Shvibzik_ anymore, and she wasn't the daughter of the tsar anymore, then who _was _she?

The answer made her cheeks flush with delight: she was nobody.

Nobody at all.

While that should have been upsetting, only a further reminder of the chaos she couldn't escape, it was not.

Because a nobody could kiss a servant if she wanted to. And, inexplicably, she found she most certainly wanted to.

"I'm feeling a little...dizzy..." Anastasia said as their dance slowed.

"Kind of lightheaded?" Dimitri asked.

"Yeah."

"Me too. Probably from spinning," he suggested, pulling away from her but still grasping her hands in his. "Maybe we should stop."

"We _have _stopped," Anastasia told him.

Dimitri felt his chest tighten. What was _happening_ to him? Why did he have new thoughts of pulling her back into his arms again to do something other than merely dance with her?

He'd held her before, when comforting her after the scuffle with Derevenko, but that had been different.

She's a _princess_, he reminded himself. The abdication didn't change the fact that her blood was as blue as a sapphire.

He knew he shouldn't be thinking of her like this, as though she were just a common girl he might flirt with or steal a kiss from.

"_Anastasia_..." he got out. "I..."

"Yes?" She was leaning in, her eyes halfway closed, not making this easy for him.

With all the will power he could muster, Dimitri pulled back again and patted her hand. "I have to go. Botkin will come looking for me."

Anastasia watched, rather dismayed, as he slipped away, leaving her standing there alone in the middle of the empty ballroom.

* * *

"Pass the butter," said Tatiana.

No one passed it. The little pair were too busy whispering back and forth, Alexei was late coming down to tea (and so was not yet present), and Olga stared unblinking -the expression on her face pale and drained of emotion- at something in her lap.

"The _butter_, please," she repeated.

Maria giggled at something Anastasia was muttering into her ear; Olga's face remained unmoved. The guards right outside might have heard, but it wasn't their job to wait on the former tsar's children. Besides, they were too engrossed in a game of dominoes to bother.

The only change in the room came from the doorway, where Dimitri was wheeling Alexei in.

"All right, Olenka, _what_ is so riveting?" Tatiana sighed, reaching quick as lightning under the table and snatching what appeared to be some sort of newspaper away from her elder sister.

"_No_, Tatya!" Her hands scrambled to her lap, desperately eager to spare her sister, but they simply were not fast enough.

"What on _earth_?" Tatiana's eyes widened, lifting the paper close to her eyes. "Is that meant to be Mama?"

Pushing Alexei in and handing him his napkin, Dimitri leaned over the table to see what Tatiana was staring at.

It was some kind of tasteless political cartoon depicting a naked woman very generously endowed in the chest wearing a crown in bed with an ugly bearded man.

Maria stopped whispering with Anastasia, got up, and leaned against Tatiana's shoulder. "Who's that with her?"

"I..." Tatiana's voice was shaky. "I think it's supposed to be Rasputin."

Knowing that it most certainly was, but wishing to lighten the mood somewhat and comfort the girls, Dimitri said, "Nah, it can't be. There would be stink lines drawn all around him."

Anastasia smiled, looking up. Then she promptly remembered she was upset with him for not kissing her in the ballroom and hastily hid her amusement behind her teacup.

Tatiana didn't take the bait, didn't spare herself the burning humiliation. "This is absurd. Those idiotkas should hold her as a _heroine_! She's the one who killed him ten years ago!" She flung the paper down. "Instead they accuse her of...of..." She couldn't even _say_ it. "How _can_ they?"

Maria patted her shoulder. "It's all right."

Tatiana buried her face in her hands. "No it's not," she murmured. "Don't you understand? Nothing will ever be okay _again_!"

Alexei chimed in. "Bartok says the unrest could settle down as soon as people start to forget about us."

Removing her hands, Tatiana sat up ramrod straight and gave Alexei a gentle yet highly critical look. "Bartok is a _bat_, Sunbeam. Bats don't talk."

"And even if they did," said Olga quietly, "I wouldn't take _your_ bat's word as gospel. He did used to belong to Rasputin, didn't he?"

"That's not fair," said Alexei, his tone defensive.

"Well, it's a moot point, because he _doesn't_ talk," retorted Tatiana, swallowing hard.

"Yes, he does," Alexei insisted, leaning over the table. "Ana, tell her."

"Alexei's right," Anastasia admitted. "Bartok used to scold me as bad as Gilliard when I was a little girl."

"You imagined it," Tatiana decided dismissively. "It was a game."

"Rubbish!" huffed Alexei. "Maria's heard him talk, too."

"Have you, Mashka?" asked Olga.

"Well, I _thought _I did," she said, smiling. "Once."

"Tatiana's right," sighed Alexei, dropping his hands to the side of his wheelchair. "It doesn't matter anyway. Bartok can talk, but he can't save us. Nobody can, and nothing is ever going to be okay again."

"Baby, I didn't mean-" began Tatiana, clearly feeling guilty.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to tell Mama you upset me," he said stingingly. "That's all you're _really_ anxious about."

"_Alyosha_!" snapped Olga.

"I don't blame you, though," he continued darkly. "This is all my own fault anyway, isn't it? For being a bleeder. If I hadn't been so sick, Mama and Papa wouldn't have tried to keep me -and themselves- away from everything. Russia would still love us today. They wouldn't believe such stupid things about Mama. Because they'd know better."

Tatiana closed her eyes and shuddered, cringing like she'd been stabbed. "Please don't let him speak such nonsense, Dimitri."

Why was _he_ being dragged into this debate? Dimitri thought, frustrated.

Then again, it was just Tatiana's way, really. Like Alexandra, she could rarely bring herself to find true fault or feel lasting anger towards Alexei. It was easier to blame somebody else for his occasional outbursts. Alexandra used to blame Olga, but Tatiana didn't dare; maybe because she secretly felt sorry for her being the eldest with so much on her shoulders. So she usually turned, though rarely with any vigor or true fury, on Dimitri. He'd almost gotten used to it, despite feeling the initial indigence stabbing his pride as suddenly and harshly as Alexei's sharp words pierced Tatiana's heart.

All he could do was clear his throat awkwardly and say, more to his boots than anything else, "No, of course not."

"I'm leaving," Alexei decided.

"You haven't eaten anything, Baby," Maria noticed, concerned.

"I'm not hungry, and I'm not your baby."

Wordlessly, Dimitri reached for the back of his wheelchair, but Alexei shot him a scowl. "My arms aren't broken. I don't _want_ you right now. Find something useful to do." With that, he painstakingly wheeled himself out of the room.

Anastasia's eyes lifted again, this time meeting Dimitri's sympathetically, her crossness forgotten.

He nodded, acknowledging her attention, then hastily shrugged and looked away.

Tears welled up in her eyes. Hot, angry tears, but also sadder than any she'd ever known.

Maria came back to sit beside her, taking her hand. She thought her younger sister was upset because of what Alexei said, and Anastasia chose to let her. How could she have possibly explained -in front of the big pair, no less- that she was really hurt by Dimitri's apparent rejection of her?

* * *

Anastasia was sewing at the window, looking out at a row of bored guards, when Alexandra sent Lili for her.

"Your mama says you are to come at once," Lili said, her tone flat with what sounded like exhaustion.

"What's it about, Lili?" Anastasia asked, setting down her sewing and getting up to follow her -and, of course, a guard- out.

"I don't know," she mumbled.

Lili was a bad liar. Not to mention her red-rimmed eyes alone gave a lot away. Something terrible had happened, or else was _going _to. Anastasia refused to let her fear show, however, and stuck her chin up a little higher.

Her sisters, Alexei, Botkin, and Dimitri were already in Alexandra's sitting room, waiting for her and Lili to arrive.

Nicholas showed up, accompanied by two more guards, a few moments after Anastasia and Lili took their seats. Lili beside Botkin; Anastasia between Maria and Tatiana.

Maria squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.

"My darlings," began Alexandra, trying -and largely failing- to sound cheerful, "I have good news and bad news. No doubt you are anxious to hear all of it." She took a letter from her pocket, unfolding it. "I'll start with the good."

Alexei yawned and stuck a cracker in his pocket for Bartok.

"You will be pleased to hear that our old friend Vladimir, whom we lost touch with after your papa abdicated, made it out of the country and is currently in Paris with your Grandmama. He has expressed his intentions to marry Cousin Sophie, and these intentions have been favorably received."

"How _wonderful_!" exclaimed Maria, letting go of Anastasia's hand and clapping. "If only we could go to the wedding. They won't let us out of the country for that, will they?"

Alexandra's eyes grew misty and it took all her restraint to keep from crying in front of her children. "No, my dear, I'm afraid not."

"A card?" Maria asked. "The government will let us send a card, won't they? Surely there's nothing so wrong in_ that_."

"We'll see," Nicholas answered for his wife with a forced smile.

"Now for the bad news," Alexandra pressed on, choking down her emotion. "They have... They have asked us to leave the palace."

"_What_?" cried Tatiana, outraged, leaping up to her feet. "But it's our _home_!"

"I know, dear, I know." Alexandra herself had had similar misgivings, but there was nothing to be done. "Still, they insist this place is far too large for us, and too conspicuous. They seem to think we will be safer sent away."

"Where are they sending us?" Olga asked.

"Tobolsk, I believe," Nicholas told her. "They have a house for our use being prepared for us there."

"Will they let us come back?" Maria wanted to know.

Alexandra shook her head.

"What? Not_ ever_?" Anastasia blurted.

"It seems doubtful," Nicholas said quietly. "No matter. The important thing is that we're all together."

"I suppose we should start packing?" Olga said next.

"It can wait until tomorrow morning," Alexandra decided. "It's late. They will at least allow us the dignity of a good night's sleep -they owe us that much."

"What about the guards?" Maria wondered aloud. "Are they coming?"

Olga giggled involuntarily. Wasn't it just like Maria to want to know about the fate of their uniformed men before anything else?

"It's not likely, child," Nicholas sighed. "The _palace_ is not going anywhere; they still need men to guard it. So we'll probably have _new _guards in Tobolsk."

Through it all, Alexei hadn't said a word. He didn't share in with his sisters and their questions. If he was holding back tears, it didn't show. His jaw was set determinedly and his expression was far away.

Anastasia hated to admit it, even to herself, but her little brother, right then, looked more like a Tsar of all Russia than her papa ever had.

* * *

"Dimitri?" Alexei leaned against the bedpost, watching his companion pack a suitcase and stifle curses under his breath.

"Yes?" He didn't look up, annoyed with all the rushed packing and the guards' lousy attitudes, intent on folding stiff army jackets with honorary medals. Not only was the dratted suitcase too small for the bulk of the jackets, but he needed to save room for the three boxes of lead soldiers Alexei was too old for yet still played with.

"If something bad happened to me," Alexei said softly, "would you look after Ana?"

"Sure, of course." Dimitri rotated the jackets and sucked his teeth in frustration. His tone was understandably curt.

"I mean _really_ bad," he clarified. "You'd make sure she was all right?"

"Yes," he huffed, lifting a box out. "Do you need all three boxes of soldiers?" Here, Dimitri glanced up briefly, but only for a response, not to take notice of the former tsarevich's facial expression.

Alexei shook his head.

He went back to packing. "Fine, just _one _then."

"You promise?"

"Promise what?"

"To look after Ana!" groaned Alexei. What did it take to make him pay_ attention_?

"Yes, yes, I _promise_." Dimitri tried to close the suitcase. When it didn't close, he threw himself, backside first, onto it, bouncing up and down until it snapped shut. _Finally_!

"Bartok, too?" he added.

"Yeah." He probably didn't even know what he was agreeing to, too focused on buckling the suitcase's side straps, now that it was closed.

Alexei took a deep breath and let his fingers wrap around the top of a sled that had been left out.

Glancing over his shoulder, Dimitri said, shortly, "That's too heavy for you."

"No, it isn't," Alexei said. "I can manage. I feel... I think I feel a little stronger today."

"If you're sure, then bring it to Lili. She'll make sure it gets put with the other outdoor stuff we're taking with us."

Alexei nodded, letting the sled go for a moment to reach into his pocket and pull out a gently folded letter. Setting it on the bed by the suitcase, he looked at Dimitri and said, "Give it to Ana, okay?"

He didn't bother asking why Alexei couldn't give it to her himself. Why the boy couldn't see he was too busy packing to play messenger right now. Dimitri just took it in stride and willed himself to remember to give it to her when he was done here.

Alexei grabbed the sled again, lifting it. "Dimitri?"

"_What_?" He couldn't keep the snappishness out of his voice. What on earth could the boy want _now_?

"You've been a good friend." He gave him a wistful smile. "Thank you for everything."

Where had _that_ come from? Dimitri almost brushed it off, but something didn't feel right.

He watched Alexei's back disappear, the boy's stride, though pained, becoming faster than it should have been. Why was he in such a hurry to get that sled to Lili?

His heart pounding, Dimitri reached for the letter. He knew he shouldn't read it, but he couldn't stop himself. He felt like he was in a slow-starting earthquake; one that began with tiny tremors which couldn't be truly noticed until the shaking became so violent it knocked you off your feet.

He goggled stupidly at the letter, speed-reading it with eyes widening in total disbelief.

Alexei wouldn't... He _wouldn't_!

"_Alexei_!" Dimitri shouted, running out into the hallway.

The letter had mentioned where to find him, so the family wouldn't have to search all over the palace when the time came. Dimitri halted to a stop at the top of the marble staircase he'd first discovered the secret of Alexei's hemophilia on.

Sure enough, there he was, at the bottom, lying there injured -or worse, _dead_- with the sled by his side showing signs of having flipped over while being ridden.

For whatever reason, Alexei Romanov had thrown himself down a staircase on a sled in what Dimitri could only hope was a botched suicide attempt.

**AN: Pleaseth review?**


	6. Alexei Recovers

**AN: This may be my last update for a while, guys. Sorry. Rest assured, it's not because I haven't been getting many reviews. My laptop broke down and I either need to get it fixed (which all the tech people are refusing to do because it's three years old), or I need to get a new one. Luckily I had most of this chapter already written (though it was going to be longer, and I had to shorten it slightly since I didn't have my own computer to work on, ergo a lot of stuff that would have happened at the end of this chapter is just going to have to happen in the next one), so I could just post it using a public computer.**

**That said, this chapter is brought to you by the Public Library in my area. Please support your own local public library. **

_Alexei Recovers_

The Tsarina was sitting at Alexei's bedside, holding his hand -quite possibly the only part of him that wasn't in pain- and trying to be strong. Trying so hard not to weep. It didn't matter that his eyes were closed or that the poor boy's body was so deeply in shock that his mind was in no state to notice whether his mother was crying or not. No, all that mattered was that she was strong. Strong for Baby. Her little Sunbeam would not awaken after the drugs Botkin had given him to help him sleep more soundly wore off to the sight of his mother in tears. Alexandra promised herself that much.

"I don't _understand_," said Tatiana, putting her hand on her mother's shoulder and squeezing it. "What _happened_?"

Nicholas, Botkin, and Anastasia, who had been the first to answer Dimitri's shouts for help after discovering the wounded former tsarevich at the bottom of the stairs, all looked to Dimitri now. The turn of their heads at Tatiana's words were almost simultaneous.

"The little idiot tried to ride his sled down the stairs," Dimitri blurted angrily, forgetting, it would seem, who he was talking to. "_That's_ what happened!"

Tatiana gasped at his tone and impertinence. Even if her brother wasn't the Tsarevich anymore this felt like it was a step too far.

Olga understood, though. "Dimitri's upset with him, and rightly so."

Alexandra swallowed hard and glared at her eldest daughter. "How can you?"

"Mama, Alexei tried to kill himself. On Dimitri's watch." Her eyes flickered from her mother up to Tatiana. "Think how you'd feel if it happened while _you _were looking after him, Tatya."

"Baby wouldn't do that," murmured Alexandra, almost inaudibly. "There must... Dimitri must have..."

"Dimitri must have _what_, Mama?" said Olga, her voice strained but her tone patient. "Forged Alyosha's goodbye letter to Anastasie? Betrayed us? _Pushed_ him down the stairs?" She shook her head. "You know he wouldn't do that. Think logically for a moment, Mama. If he was a traitor, he'd never have agreed to leave here and go to Tobolsk with us."

"_Olga_..." began Tatiana.

But Olga had more to say, cutting her off. "He didn't hurt Alyosha ten years ago, when he first learned our family's secret and joined us, and he didn't hurt him now. This is just like then."

"No it's not," Maria cut in, her voice cracking.

Olga was startled into silence; she was surprised because Maria hadn't said anything since she'd learned about Alexei's 'accident' with the sled. Not a single word to anyone. She'd just goggled and followed them all around like a frightened puppy.

"What do you mean, Mashka?" Tatiana asked.

"It's not like last time because..." She sniffled. "Because this time Baby knew... He _knew_ what he was doing. It wasn't just in fun."

Alexandra choked and a short stream of tears she had to let go of Alexei's hand for a moment to properly wipe away spilled down her cheeks. "You silly girlie," sobbed Alexandra, dabbing her eyes. "Just look what you've made me do."

Anastasia, unable to take this a moment longer, turned and fled the room, pushing past Botkin and Nicholas. Both of whom tried to stop and comfort her.

She'd was having none of it, though. Alexandra's tears had been the final straw for her; she could stand no more. She needed time alone -with her own suffering not being smothered by everyone else's- and she needed it _now_.

Dimitri considered following her out, then decided against it. He had to remember his place. It wasn't his place to go chasing after Anastasia or her sisters. It was his place to look after Alexei. Maybe if he hadn't forgotten that, if his mind hadn't been elsewhere, this wouldn't have happened.

Yes, he was angry with Alexei, but -though he didn't show it- much angrier with himself.

And, seeing the pathetically limp ex-tsarevich lying there so helplessly, he could forgive Alexei.

Easily, he could forgive the poor boy.

Forgiving _himself_, however, was another matter entirely. With himself, Dimitri was not so generous or moved by emotional attachment.

* * *

Dimitri paced the imperial library, picking up (and then promptly putting back down) various books without really looking at most of their titles. He tried his best to ignore the pair of guards following him with resentful expressions. They were probably annoyed that they'd been ordered to keep an eye on everyone close to the family, including servants who never did anything interesting.

They were bored, and they blamed Dimitri for it.

Well, what was one more blame to take on anyway? It was his fault what happened to Alexei, it was his fault he wasn't amusing enough for the guards... Maybe tomorrow the sun wouldn't rise. Maybe it would wake up, take a look around, and decide to go back to sleep.

And maybe _that_ would be his fault too.

Returning what was likely a very valuable copy of _Oliver Twist_ to its place on the shelf, Dimitri sighed.

"Dimitri?" It was a girl's voice, not one of the guards.

For a second, he thought it was Anastasia and felt his cheeks warm involuntarily, then he turned and realized it was _Olga _Romanov standing behind him.

"Oh, hey," he said deflatedly. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to be certain you were all right."

"Your brother has almost been killed twice in my presence," Dimitri muttered sarcastically, picking _Oliver Twist_ up again and flipping pages without looking at them. "Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"He shouldn't have done that to you," Olga said quietly. "I meant what I said to Mama earlier. I love my brother very, very much, but what he did was wrong and cowardly." Her eyes drifted to her fingers. "I think I am a little ashamed of him."

"He didn't do anything to _me_," Dimitri told her. "I'm not the one lying in bed hemorrhaging."

Olga opened her mouth to reply, then reached out and put her fingertips on the book he still held.

Their eyes met, and in that moment Dimitri felt sorrier for her than for himself. Olga, twenty-four years old, unmarried, doomed to be a prisoner with her disgraced family and suicidal brother.

This, when she could -_should_, even- have married a crown prince. She didn't deserve this. None of them did.

But where he felt sorry for Alexei because he was ill, Maria because she was so kind and innocent, Anastasia for such obvious yet unexplainable reasons, and Tatiana because she was so tragically beautiful and cold -so like the former Tsarina, yet never given the chance to make her own choices, where she might have decided differently than her mother- Olga was the one he felt sorry for on an intellectual level. Some servants Dimiti used to know had commented she was as much like Nicholas as Tatiana was like Alexandra save for the fact that she had a working temper whereas her papa was known for his meek passivity. He could see that now. Especially looking back on the family as a whole during his ten years with them.

Anastasia and Maria were young enough that they might recover from this as the bulk of their lives went on. As for Tatiana, she seemed comfortable in isolation, just like Alexandra. If it weren't for the guards acting up sometimes, and the unfair restrictions, she very probably would have been perfectly happy with things just the way they were. Only Olga was getting to the point where her life was passing her by in captivity. If this rubbish with the government went on for another, say, five years, she'd already be nearing thirty by the time it was all sorted. She'd have a decade left before the onset on middle-age. Most of her youth would be lost.

Thoughtlessly, as if Olga was as much his sister as Alexei's, Dimitri felt his hand move across the book and place itself over hers. It was so automatic it surprised even him.

The gesture was so unexpectedly familiar that Olga had to choke back tears. That this servant, generally unaffectionate in nature, could care about her and her family so much... That he could be their trusted friend meant the world to her. She did love him like a brother. Indeed, she had for a long, long time. It had simply not been seemly to _say _so. Even now, she did not say it. At heart, revolution or no revolution, she was still the daughter of the Tsar. But she smiled and continued to stare into his eyes for just a couple moments longer, letting hers say would her lips couldn't.

Neither of them noticed the pair of blue eyes looking at them from the open space left by _Oliver Twist_'s removal.

Anastasia stood on the other side of the shelf, clutching Pooka to her chest. She was fighting back tears, too, but for very different reasons than her eldest sister.

For she thought she understood, at last, why Dimitri had rejected her in the ballroom.

* * *

The room Alexei opened his eyes to was dark and cool. The first thing he registered was that he had apparently not died. He'd imagined heaven would be white, not dark and shadowy, like his bedroom with all the curtains drawn so the sunlight wouldn't wake him prematurely. The second was the sting of guilt. What everybody must be going through, after what he'd done to himself.

If he'd died, they would grieve, but then they'd have been free of him. At least, that was the way Alexei saw it. Now, they were more securely chained to their bleeding Baby than ever before.

He'd made things worse for them, not better.

A tall figure, blurred by the moisture in his eyes (welling tears were the fate of most of the Romanov siblings that day, evidently), placed a cool cloth on his forehead.

At first he thought it was his mama, but the touch was too willowy, made by a lighter hand.

"Ta..." he croaked. "Tatya?"

"How are you feeling?" Tatiana asked.

"All right," he lied. So many joints pained him right then he didn't even bother to count. "Where is everybody?"

"Papa, Maria, and Mama are outside, walking with some of the guards," she told him. "Mama had to be wrenched away from your side, but Papa insisted she needed fresh air. I offered to sit with you until she returned; I think that made her feel better about it."

"Ana?"

"I'm not sure where she is," admitted Tatiana with a forced nonchalant shrug. "She was...upset...by your injuries and ran off. I thought she would have composed herself by now, but the last anyone's seen her today was outside our library. That was hours ago. A large number of the guards are on alert for her, horrified at the idea of her escaping on their watch." She rolled her eyes and turned the cool cloth over. "_Idiokas_, the lot of them."

Alexei considered sitting up, but the pain was too great. "Will they still move us now?"

Tatiana's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed together so tightly they turned white. "Yes, of course. I hope you didn't throw yourself down the stairs to keep us here..."

He shook his head.

"There will be a delay until you're better, though."

"That could take weeks," Alexei noted. Had he unwittingly given his family several extra weeks at home in their beautiful Catherine Palace before they were forced to leave it forever?

"They are giving us only two," Tatiana sighed.

Alexei shuddered.

"And Papa will have to carry you himself. I do hope they send a car for us. It would be just dreadful for Papa to have to carry you all the way there on foot." Tatiana turned away from her brother so he couldn't see the sly smile forming on her face. She knew very well what she was doing. What game she was playing at to ensure Alexei would not pull another stunt like this next time he felt like a burden to them.

The ex-tsarevich's forehead wrinkled. "It's not a big deal. They'll probably send a car. And, even if they don't, Dimitri can help carry me."

"Oh, that's right, you don't know." Tatiana sighed.

"Know what?"

"It will wait until you recover." Still turned away from him, she walked to the window. "Now that you're awake, would you like a bit of sunlight?"

"Tell me!" Alexei insisted, his eyes widening.

"Dimitri was sacked," she said coolly, pulling back the drapes. "_Naturally_, he was sacked. After what happened, Mama couldn't conceive of keeping him on, however loyal he's been, so the guards will escort him away from the palace soon. Perhaps they have already done so."

"No!" This time, Alexei managed to make himself sit, if not straight up, than higher up, using the plumpest pillow to support his aching lower back.

"Well, he wasn't looking after you and you had a horrible accident. His negligence is nothing short of unspeakable."

"It wasn't like that at all," he cried. "Really, it wasn't! I did it on _purpose_. I'm so, so sorry! I won't ever do that again... There was a letter... I didn't mean... Oh, _please_ tell Mama not to sack him! He hasn't really left yet, has he? Don't I get to say goodbye?"

"If you really and truly promise," Tatiana said, swallowing hard to keep her expression grim as she turned to face him again, "I'll see what can be done." She arched an eyebrow. "But you must_ swear_, Alyosha."

"I swear," Alexei promised immediately.

"Then I think everything will be all right now," Tatiana said reassuringly. "You just need to get well again and we'll take it from there."

"One more thing, Tatya?"

"Yes, Sunbeam?"

"Where... Where is Bartok?"

"Papa had him put in his cage and moved to another room. His frantic flying around frightened Mama, because of who he used..." Tatiana swallowed, unable to finish that sentence. After seeing that hideous political cartoon, she found herself choking with rage every time Rasputin's name came up.

Alexei winced. He himself never used the cage, avoiding putting his batty friend in there. He'd have to ask Papa or Ana to let him out. He wanted to ask Tatiana _now_, but was too worried she'd take Mama's part and say no.

* * *

The absurdly short fortnight given for Alexei's recovery before the Romanovs were to be moved to Tobolsk was filled with tension. Anastasia was finally found and the guards -at these those with a sense of humor- had a good laugh, once they realized she was still on palace grounds and had been under their noses the entire time.

But, once she was reunited with her family, it was clear something was not right. She wasn't on speaking terms with Olga, much to her eldest sister's bafflement. And she wouldn't even _look _at Dimitri. It was only toward Maria, Alexei, Tatiana, her dog, and her parents that Anastasia acted no differently than usual.

Standing beside the samovar on the day they were to leave, Anastasia felt torn as Dimitri approached her wheeling Alexei's chair. If it had just been Alexei, she would have smiled. If it had been Dimitri alone, she'd have ignored him. She settled on just avoiding Dimitri's gaze, acting like he wasn't there.

Alexei rose shakily from his wheelchair and approached the samovar. It was an extravagant one, all in silver and the finest enamel, topped with a carved swan and decorated with dancing bears.

"I'm taking this with us," he said, this small fifteen-year-old boy looking so utterly serious about carrying off this large, ornate thing that Anastasia would have laughed if she'd been in a different kind of mood.

"What do you think we're going to do in Tobolsk with something that fancy, Baby?" Tatiana appeared with Lili and put her arm around her brother, helping him bring the samovar along all the same. "Dimitri, please bring the wheelchair back around in a few minutes. Botkin says it's good for him to stretch his legs a bit, but you know how easily tires out."

Dimitri could hear Alexei grumbling, "We're still going to need hot water in _Tobolsk_, Tatya," and Lili tittering, as they disappeared into the next room.

It was then that Anastasia realized their departure had left her alone with Dimitri. Exactly the _last_ thing she wanted right then.

He cleared his throat.

She forced an awkward cough, then turned to face the double glass doors that led into the ballroom.

"There's not much time," Dimitri warned her. "They'll be waiting for you."

"Then go tell everyone I'll be there in a minute," Anastasia said tersely, sticking her head through the doors. "I just want to see it one more time."

"I-"

"We're not coming back here, Dimitri."

"I know."

"Not ever."

"I _said_ I know."

"I just don't want to_ forget_ okay?" she snapped. "Leave me alone." Wasn't it enough that he'd rejected her for her own sister? Now he couldn't even let her soak in the memories of happier times -when there were balls and Papa didn't look so grave all the time- in peace before she had to leave it behind forever?

"Are you mad at me?" Dimitri asked after a long pause.

"Whatever gave you that impression?" Anastasia muttered, taking a step into the ballroom, hoping he wouldn't follow.

He did. "Maybe the fact that you haven't spoken to me in over two weeks?"

Anastasia whirled on him, not realizing how close he was standing to her, their noses almost colliding before Dimitri jumped back. "You should have just _told_ me, _okay_?"

"Told you what?"

She snorted. "If this is about me telling Mama or Papa, relax, I'm not going to tattle on the both of you. It's none of my business." Folding her arms across her chest, she added, "Which, I might add, you've made perfectly clear."

"The both of _who_?" Dimitri was genuinely lost.

"Oh, my _God_!" Anastasia huffed. "I know about you and Olga."

"Me and...Olga...?" Now he was _really_ confused. "Your _sister_?"

"Exactly how many Olgas do you know, Dimitri?"

"It's a pretty common name," he pointed out.

"God, I can't even _talk_ to you," Anastasia fumed. "You're_ impossible_!"

"_I'm_ impossible?" Princess or not, _she_ was hardly one to talk.

"For the record, I understand why you like her," she blurted. "She's older, smarter... Taller..." Not by much, though, and certainly not as tall as Tatiana, but -being realistic here- there was no way in blazes Dimitri had the slightest chance with her... "But you should have said something. The last time we were in this ballroom together, before you walked out on me, I not only thought you..." Her face was going a little red. "I actually... _Ughhh_!" Stamping her foot she started to walk away from him, but he grabbed onto her wrist, pulling her back.

"Stop being crazy for a second," he said.

"_I'm_ crazy?" she exclaimed, narrowing her eyes like she couldn't believe he had the gall to say that. Rolling her eyes, she turned to leave. "Look, we should go. They're waiting for me, like you said."

Thoughtlessly, he reached out a hand to stop her, grabbing her wrist again. "Wait, hold on a minute, hold on."

"Why?" she demanded. "What could you _possibly_ have left to say to me?"

Without another word, he pulled her into his arms, holding her much closer than when they had danced together, stunning Anastasia into silence.

**AN: Reviews welcome, but please don't feel offended if I don't reply to your review right away. I will as soon as I can. **


	7. Journey to Tobolsk: Part One

**AN: I hate my new computer. It restarts when I try to get online half the time. And that's the LEAST of the trouble this dumb-bunny machine had been giving me. So don't be too shocked if updates still take a while. With this thing is a miracle I can update AT ALL... **

**Gosh, I miss my old laptop so darn MUCH!**

_Journey To Tobolsk: part 1_

He still knew, of course, that she was a princess (Nicholas and his abdication notwithstanding). He still knew it was wrong, that he shouldn't be doing this. But, just as he had stunned her into silence by this simple action of drawing her into his arms, holding onto her in such an over-familiar way without asking or even giving the slightest indication he meant to do it, her accusation that he was in love with her eldest sister had shocked _him_ just as deeply.

How could she possibly think, even for a minute, he was in love with Olga Romanov? What on _earth_ gave her that impression? She really _was _crazy!

Wasn't it obvious that, in another life where there was no royalty, if he was going to admit he had feelings of more than friendship for any of the Romanov girls, it would have been _her_? Anastasia. The girl who'd gotten him into trouble and yet brought him so much joy as a child. The girl who'd grown, though she didn't seem to know it, into quite a lovely young woman in her own right.

Dimitri _was _fond of her sisters, sure, but his love for them was like his love for Alexei. It was pure, harmless, brotherly. He didn't secretly want to touch them.

Maybe that was it. Maybe, in reining himself in with Anastasia, always worried he'd go too far, he'd been _too _distant.

But that was a _good_ thing, wasn't it? That was what needed to be done... _Right_?

Yet, paradoxically, he wanted her to know the truth. He couldn't have her thinking he was snubbing her, not for propriety's sake, but because he wanted someone else just as high above the salt.

Dimitri had never really been good at expressing his feelings. This left him with few options, and he took one he knew he was going to regret but at the time saw no way around.

Anastasia still in his arms, he tilted his head, leaned in, and pressed his lips firmly against hers.

Her eyes widened, then closed. She started to respond naturally. Even though she'd never been kissed like that before, the gesture was not difficult to return. Especially since this was something she'd wanted since the _last _time they'd been alone in the ballroom together. Now it would be a beautiful memory. One last good thing to happen to her in this magical room.

The best yet, in fact.

However, she'd barely started to kiss him back when he pulled away, looking guilty. Apparently the moment was far too sweet to last.

"What's wrong?" she whispered, lips still tingling.

Dimitri let go of her and shook his head. "We should go."

She nodded mutely. What else could she expect him to say? She knew him too well to expect him to profess undying love for her. Or even so much as explain himself.

At least, if nothing more, Anastasia now had reassurance that he wasn't in love with somebody else.

* * *

"Papa, when can we go?" whispered Maria tiredly. "Aren't they ready yet? Is there something wrong? They've kept us waiting for _hours_ now."

"There's some delay, Mashka my dear," sighed Nicholas, stroking his beard anxiously. "I'm sure it will be sorted soon."

"I'm scared," she added, still whispering.

Olga, giving up her seat on the small wooden bench she'd been sharing with Alexei (and, by default, Dimitri, whose shoulder Alexei was dozing against), urged Maria to take it. "It will be all right," she told her second youngest sister softly as they switched places. "Just try not to bother Papa so much. He's worried, too. It's wearing him to a shadow -the guards arguing about what time we're meant to leave, with no more grace than if they were moving a few dogs..."

Asleep next to the ex-tsarevich's suitcase, Pooka snorted and rolled over.

Anastasia was sitting on her own suitcase. She chuckled at Pooka's timing, her eyes drifting from her dog to Dimitri for a moment. He smiled awkwardly back at her and gestured down at Alexei's slumbering form, half-shrugging with his free shoulder.

Blushing, she looked away.

Any mushy thoughts on her mind were interrupted by two commanding officers of the guard bursting into the dead quiet room. One was scowling while the other looked resigned.

The resigned one stood with his hands behind his back as he spoke. "Romanovs, you are to be transported in thirty minutes. I hope you have packed everything you will need, because your rooms are already sealed and photographed. You are not permitted to return to them."

As if to reassure herself, Anastasia tapped the bulge in her coat pocket that was her music box.

She knew she wouldn't have left it, her grandmother's gift having been the _first_ thing she'd made sure was ready to take along to Tobolsk, but there was something so frightening about the finality of it all and the grim look on the officer's drained face that left her feeling as if she had forgotten something important and beloved. Something she would not remember until it was too late. But, as long as she had her family, the small remainder of loyal servants (like Lili, Dimitri, and Botkin), her dog, and her music box, losing anything else -no matter how precious- would be bearable. They were all together; that was what truly mattered.

"We have already been waiting here for nearly _five_ hours," Tatiana said boldly, glancing down at her pale-faced Mama with pity and then darting her eyes back to the officer coldly. "And yet we were told not to be a minute late."

"Tatiana-" Olga tried.

But her sister was not to be stopped. "One of your men scolded my youngest sister." Here she turned and nodded at Anastasia. "Scolded her as if _we_ couldn't manage it -she is _our _sister after all, not_ his_, I'd like to point out- for lingering in the ballroom with my brother's companion when she ought to have been here waiting."

Anastasia felt her face growing hot. Tatiana had no idea of what they'd -she and Dimitri- been doing in that ballroom, only that they'd been there too long for the guard's tastes. She wondered if maybe Olga knew -or _guessed_- though. She had to of suspected _something_ was up when Anastasia began talking to her and looking at Dimitri again.

"Need I remind you," the scowling officer cut in, "that you are all still under arrest? _We_ do not answer to _you_. You are foolish to confuse us with your former servants and cossacks. Those days are over. _Long_ over. And I will not have you speak out at us like that again. Things could become very unpleasant for you if you did. _Understand_?"

"Is that a threat?" Nicholas growled, eyes flaming with sudden uncharacteristic anger. "Are you threatening my daughter?"

The resigned officer stepped between the scowling one and Nicholas. "Please be calm and patient, Comrade Romanov. We are sorry for any inconvenience, but this has not been an easy trip for _us_ to arrange either. My men are all as tired as your family is."

"Come here, my darling," said Alexandra, motioning with her hand for Tatiana come crouch beside her. She would not dignify either of the guards with the slightest glance of acknowledgment, focusing only on her favorite daughter.

"One half hour!" boomed the scowling guard, storming away.

Maria shuddered at the sound of his retreating feet. Pooka growled in his sleep.

"Horrible man," muttered Alexandra, reaching for Tatiana's hand and squeezing gently.

The resigned guard sighed. In another time, he might have bowed respectfully, as if in apology, but he only blinked at them pityingly and left the same way as his comrade had.

* * *

A long wait followed by an insult from a disgruntled officer was not the worst the Romanovs would have to endure while beginning their journey to Tobolsk. Far worse came in the form of Lili being grabbed by two guards and yanked roughly back as she was trying to board the train.

In front of her, Maria had slipped, and she'd just helped the girl straighten herself out and go join her sisters, preparing to follow, when she felt strong hands grasp her by the shoulders and waist. She was so frightened her mouth opened wide, as if to scream, but no sound could come out.

"_Lili_!" cried Maria, whirling around. "Anastasia, get Mama; they're not letting Lili come with us! They're taking her somewhere!"

Anastasia ran down the length of the car and returned with a furious-faced Alexandra. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Your former lady-in-waiting is being arrested," the guards told her gruffly. "We advise you not to resist, or there will be trouble."

"You cannot simply take away a member of my family and threaten me into silence as you drag them off to heaven only knows where!" exclaimed the ex-tsarina, taking a step off the train. "On what charges do you take her from us?"

"That is no concern of yours."

"But," said Maria, shakily, "we're all prisoners, aren't we? Isn't she still under arrest if she's with us? Can't we have her along all the same? What harm could it do?"

"We have our orders, miss." The guard who spoke these words had a slightly gentler tone with Maria. "We are to send you lot off, and take the lady-in-waiting in hand."

"But you can't take her!" shouted Alexandra desperately, wringing her hands together until her knuckles turned white. "You _can't_!"

"Control yourself,_ Madam_!" The guard callously raised a bayonet and bared his teeth just the slightest bit.

Anastasia couldn't help but think she'd never heard anyone say 'Madam' like that -as though it were the harshest of insults- before.

Tatiana and Olga appeared behind their mother, stretching out their hands helplessly in Lili's direction. Tears streamed freely down Olga's cheeks. _Don't leave us, don't leave us, Lili..._ Their eyes were burning with the words they were dying to shout out but couldn't.

Besides, even if they _could_, what difference would it make? Lili was in no control over her own fate now. It might have _felt_ like her deserting them, but it wasn't her fault. If given a choice, if these horrible guards weren't taking her away (maybe forever!), she'd have followed them, not only to Tobolsk, but to the very ends of the earth.

"Goodbye, my dearest ones!" wept Lili over her shoulder, calling louder the further they pulled her away. "Be strong, my dears! Be strong! I love you! I will come to you, when they let me go. I _promise_! Wherever you are, my dear family, I will come!"

"Good...bye..." breathed Maria pitifully, crying so hard now she had brought on herself a bad case of the shakes and hiccups.

Tatiana's arm slipped around Maria. "You heard her, Mashka," she whispered. "You heard her. She's coming after us. Lili is simply coming along later. That's what we have to think, to be brave for Mama until Lili's with us again."

For a terrible moment, Anastasia wondered if they would make up some reason to arrest Dimitri 'on orders' too. True, he had only been a kitchen boy, whereas Lili had a title -however minimal- before the revolution. All the same, a companion to a tsarevich was not completely different from a Tsarina's lady-in-waiting...

If they took _him_, on top of taking Lili, Anastasia would have felt an anger that rivaled any she'd ever felt in her life. Just the thought of it made her blood boil. It wasn't only her own feelings for Dimitri she was thinking of; it was how alone her little brother would be without him. Dimitri had been with Alexei too long to be taken from him when he was most vulnerable.

But, no, here was Dimitri now, climbing aboard, helping carry Botkin's medicine bag and two of the smaller suitcases that had not already been loaded.

Anastasia held her breath, watching for the guards' reaction. They were not grasping him as they'd grasped Lili... They were letting him come. She let the breath out.

"I saw what happened," Dimitri told her as they all walked to their cars, Maria still sniffling despite trying to do as Tatiana said and be brave for their Mama. "I'm so sorry."

"How can they _do_ this to us?" snapped Anastasia. "Lili's never hurt anyone in her life! It's just spite, that's all it is."

Dimitri nodded glumly. He wanted to say something -even if it was just a wisecrack- but nothing came to him. Lili being taken like this was just too unfair, even in his eyes. He'd never realized how much he liked Lili until now. She'd always just sort of _been there_... Now he saw how much that meant to all the grand duchesses and their mother... Now he saw the sheer amount of selfless love Lili had always had for the Romanov family.

She just might have loved them even more than_ he_ did.

And that was saying an awful lot.

* * *

"I can't believe they took Lili," Alexei whispered to Bartok (who was lying on his pillow). "Maybe they're going to separate the rest of us, too, when we get to Tobolsk. Or sooner." He clenched his jaw, fighting back both childish tears and a yawn. When he released it again, his eyes streamed silent rivers. "I don't want to be separated from Ana, Bartok." He wanted to stay with his whole family -especially his favorite sister- forever. "I don't want them to take me away because I'm sick."

"Master..."

Alexei snuggled deeper into the pillow, scooting closer to Bartok so that his nose was almost touching the little white bat. "They could, you know. If they can take Lili away for no reason, they could take me away because of my haemophilia."

"With all due respect, Master," said Bartok, tilting his head. "You almost took _yourself_ away."

"At least that felt like a choice," Alexei said softly. A _bad_ one, yes, one he knew he must never repeat, certainly, but a choice all the same. "I feel like everything's being taken. I'm scared to sleep, almost. Afraid I'll wake up and find the guards moved me..."

"Don't be scared," Bartok told him, sitting up on the pillow. "You've got old Bartok watching out for you." One of his large white ears did a half turn, listening. "And I tell you what, there's nothing coming to get you right now. Perfectly okay to sleep."

"The guards..."

"Don't you worry none about the guards." Bartok rose to his feet now, bouncing on the pillow dramatically. "They come to take you away from the others, and I'll give them a ha, then a hi-ya!" He kicked up one foot and flapped his wings. "And I'll kick them, Master."

Alexei smiled sadly. "I wish I could pretend this was just a family vacation, off someplace nice."

"You can." Bartok sighed and put his head back down next to his master's nose. "You can sleep now and dream of Livadia."

"Maybe we'll meet there, on the dreamland road to the Crimea," Alexei murmured, his eyes half-closed now. "You, me, Dimitri, and Ana. And our dream-souls can play together all night while the train takes our bodies to Tobolsk."

* * *

"What are you doing?" Dimitri slid open the door to the train compartment Anastasia was supposed to be asleep in.

Instead of sleeping, she was kneeling forward on her seat to peek out the window at the full moon spreading its pale-colored glow over the Russian snow-capped countryside.

She glanced back at him. "Nothing. Be quiet."

"The guards said we aren't supposed to look out the windows," Dimitri whisper-hissed urgently. "We're supposed to be a red cross train."

"And let me guess," Anastasia said, raising an eyebrow. "You haven't been looking out _your _window when you think no one's watching."

"It's different for me," he reminded her. "No one in Russia knows _my_ face from a postage stamp."

"There's nobody _to recognize_ me out there." Anastasia gestured with her chin. "It's almost four in the morning and we're in the middle of nowhere."

"The guards will still get angry," he said, swallowing hard. "If they wake up and see what you've been up to."

She sighed and sat back, slumping down into the seat. "I miss the palace already."

"It was a place we once lived." Dimitri cleared his throat, trying to sound tough, like nothing so trivial as being taken out of some mere _building_ could hurt him. "End of story."

Anastasia blinked back tears and clenched her jaw. If he was going to be like _that_, she was not about to show weakness in front of him.

"Where's Maria?" He changed the subject. After all, it _was_ strange to see Anastasia sleeping alone. She and Maria had shared everything -from rooms to bedtimes- her whole life.

"Sleeping with Mama and Papa," Anastasia explained. "Mostly for Mama's sake. She's distraught without Lili, and Papa just sits up and smokes." She shuddered a little at the memory of the darkening rings under her papa's eyes from lack of sleep. "Tatiana offered, but she's too tall for the cot in their compartment."

Avoiding her eyes, Dimitri pushed back his cuticles with his thumbnail.

"Why are you here?" she suddenly asked.

He shrugged.

"You know Maria's a heavy sleeper," she realized slowly, smiling. "And that I'm not."

"_I'm_ a heavy sleeper," he said, shrugging again.

"But you're not sleeping."

"Look, my coming to see you has nothing to do with what happened in the ballroom."

Her smile waned a little. "Oh?"

"Actually, if you were still up...I..."

"Yes?" She raised both eyebrows expectantly.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. "I wanted to apologize."

"_Apologize_?"

"If I ever pull you in like that again, I want you to promise me you'll slap me or push me away."

She frowned. "Why?"

"Because it's not proper." Speaking of not proper, he realized this was the first time he'd ever been alone with her dressed in pajamas since she was _ten_.

"What's 'not proper' is how infuriating you are half the time," Anastasia snorted. "We _barely_ kissed."

He rolled his eyes. "And since when are you an expert on kissing?"

Anastasia folded her arms across her chest and glowered.

"Look, I'm trying to _help_," he sighed. "We're never going to be together, and you seem to have a..._crush_...shall we say? On me... I just-"

"_I _have a _crush_ on _you_?" Anastasia spluttered, jumping up to her feet. How _dare_ he! How dare he just calmly reduce whatever was happening between them, feelings she knew were -on _her_ end, anyway- real enough, to a silly schoolgirl crush? Why did she even _like_ Dimitri? He was so _stupid_! "Please just remove yourself from my sight."

In a tone somewhere between mocking and honestly compliant, he murmured, "Your highness," managed a half-bow, and left her standing there alone in the utter silence that always engulfs the world at four in the morning.

Gritting her teeth, she twisted her right index finger in the chain of her _Together In Paris_ necklace. She kept on twisting, looping in tighter and tighter, until she felt the chain impressing itself into her skin.

It was a more than welcome distraction. For, being left behind in the empty compartment was worse, somehow, than leaving the sealed up palace had been.

How on _earth_ had Dimitri managed to reject her once, then un-reject her, only to come in to her like this and reject her all over again? Anastasia was growing more than a little tired of this endless cycle of nonsense.

If he ever did try to kiss her again, maybe she really _would_ slap him.

* * *

After traveling several days by train, the Romanovs and the servants that had not been taken from them (as poor Lili had) were escorted -in hard wooden carts- by the most heavily armed of guards to a chilly port, waiting for the arrival of a boat called the _Rus_.

"Wherever is your fur hat, Baby?" Alexandra's eyes darted to Alexei's momentarily bare head in panic. "You'll freeze without it." _Especially_, she thought, with his short hair, which was taking so much longer to grow back than his sisters'...

With almost comically perfect timing, Maria's teeth began to chatter and she huddled closer to Anastasia and Olga.

"Dimitri, child," said Nicholas kindly. "I think Alyosha has forgotten his hat back in the cart. Could you please run and fetch it for us before the guards remove it?"

The fact that he took off for the hat immediately -so like a servant obeying his Tsar- ruffled the feathers of the closest guards, one of whom stuck out his foot to trip him.

Dimitri landed face-first in a slush pit of snow and mud.

Nicholas' expression was full of sympathy. He had not expected the poor fellow to come to grief with such a simple request. Having been a tsar for so long, albeit not a particularly commanding one, he wasn't used to his orders being obeyed resulting in bad consequences for those who did so. When his beloved Sunny started fretting about Alexei's missing hat, Nicholas had to admit, he had not thought his request through. Better it would have been -in the most humblest of tones- to perhaps ask one of the guards to do it. They would have grumbled and mocked, but they wouldn't have instantly decided Dimitri was a worthy target.

It worried Nicholas to think that -if they took to venting more of their feelings toward the old monarchy on his son's companion- this could escalate into a dangerous situation for the unfortunate young man. Lili, poor soul, was almost safer in whatever miserable prison they had hauled her off to.

Although Dimitri chafed bitterly inside, wanting nothing more than to pull one of the guards down into the slush beside him, he settled on shooting them a stony expression that clearly said _I won't forget this_, and continuing on his way to get the hat.

He did make it to the cart in time, but only just. And this resulted in more boorish laughter from the guards.

Maria was confused and shocked. "Tatiana, I don't understand why they're being this way. Some of these men -these very _same _men- were not so awful to us back at the palace." Yes, the commanding officers were harsh -they'd been cruel about arranging their travel, and she'd witnessed that plain as day- but the fellows tripping Dimitri were... Well, they were common soldiers. Honest, overall _good_ soldiers just trying to do their job... Or so she'd believed. Until now.

"Don't be silly, Mashka. Certainly you knew they didn't like Papa?" Tatiana replied, her tone full of exasperation.

"Even little Boris with the bad leg?" Maria asked, pointing to a soldier she had conversed with several times during their house arrest. "He's always been nice to me; his jokes-"

"For _God's sake_, Mashka!" interjected Olga, not out of true anger but in surprise at the degree of her sister's naivity. "Who do you think your 'dear little Boris' blames for his bad leg?"

"Not..._Papa_...?" she faltered.

"Yes, Papa," Olga told her.

"And you must have noticed Boris was pointing and smiling when Dimitri was tripped," Tatiana added.

Maria _had_ noticed, but had been unable to absorb this information. Her heart didn't want to believe it. She didn't love Boris, not like she loved her family, but she _was _fond of him. She was fond of many of their guards. That was why she'd asked if they were were coming with them to Tobolsk, and had been disappointed when her papa said no.

"Look," Anastasia jumped in, her tone bitter, "just because somebody's handsome in a uniform isn't a reason to trust them. Even people you think you know can let you down." For some reason -perhaps because Maria had begun to cry- nobody noticed Anastasia's eyes dart over to Dimitri at that last bit.

Dimitri felt like someone was reaching into his chest and squeezing the breath and blood out of his lungs and heart. He was so damned angry at those guards, yet just one betrayed look from Anastasia that no one else saw was enough to deflate his rage.

Sucking his teeth, he handed Alexei's hat to Nicholas, who clapped it over his son's head in a lopsided fashion.

One of Alexei's ears peeked out and Alexandra reached over and covered it, straightening the hat. She did her best not to let her hand make contact with the little white bat on his shoulder.

Pulling away from his tight-lipped mother, Alexei heard a fog-horn sound.

"Well," he said, nuzzling his cheek against Bartok, "the boat's here."

**AN: Review please. **


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